October 7, 2016: Access Hollywood October 7, 2016, was a Friday. My wife and I sat in our family room, waiting to leave for the movie theatre to see La La Land. The television served as background noise until about ten minutes before we left. That’s when a Fox News Alert popped up. Fox reported that NBC News had released an audiotape of a conversation between Billy Bush and Donald Trump.

The thing that most rankled the left and crony-capitalist “right” about Donald Trump’s Magic Escalator Ride were his statements on illegal immigration. “They’re not sending their best.” The left sees open borders as a means of finally reducing the United States to a pauper nation, a dream long shared by socialists and communists in the US and Europe. Crony capitalists are less prosaic in their aims. They see open borders as a source of cheap labor.

Boris Johnson’s Tories will win their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. Maybe bigger than Thatcher’s. Praise God! (This will be very short.) The conservative tide continues. People around the world are fed up with the failed ideas of the 1960s and 1970s. Maybe it was nostalgia that drove world leaders to dig up all the political crap I remember from my childhood. It failed then, and it’s failing us now.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman today asked a rhetorical question: Trump’s Going to Get Re-elected, Isn’t He? The headline reflects the question he hears from his Democrat friends. They seem resigned to defeat. And the answer is: Yes. President Trump will win re-election in 2020. The reasons Trump will get re-elected: The Hate Squad. Four radical communist freshmen Representatives are the face of the new Democrat party. They are anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American.

Donald Trump’s triumph in the 2016 election drove Chelsea Handler into a depraved descent. Weed and depression. Psychiatrists. Broken. Not because of anything that happened to her. She didn’t lose her home. No one close to her died because of the election. Chelsea Handler lost her mind because reality violated her expectations. I’m pretty sure Ms. Handler doesn’t read Hennessy’s View, but you do. So, for you, I’ll tell you how to avoid losing your mind when reality violates your expectations.

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them.

Yesterday, I predicted the NFL would suffer a season-shortening labor dispute this season or next. The reason: President Trump’s pressure on owners to crack down on anthem haters will stir up a fight between NFL Players Association and the owners. As if on cue: [caption id=“attachment_24766” align=“alignnone” width=“1285”]Fox News[/caption] President Trump, in an exclusive interview with “Fox & Friends,” said that NFL owners are “afraid” to act against their players protesting the national anthem at games across the country.

They were dumbfounded. Those United Nations stuffed shirts were dumbfounded. Struck dumb. Silenced. Shocked. Floored. Those sissy diplomats were shaken. Appalled. Frightened. Never in the sordid history of the United Nations has an American president spoken in unvarnished truth in unvarnished terms. Trump has the best words. Trump used his best words today. The best of the best. Trump called Kim Jung Un “Rocket Man.” The funniest and most effective linguistic kill-shot to date.

Nancy Pelosi is paying a price for statesmanship. Remember when this blog wrote about liberals saving us from Antifa? But one group can save us from the Antifa caliphate. An unlikely group. A group you’d never believe could be the heroes of this terrifying story. Who’s this group? Who will save America? Who will preserve Western Civilization? Christendom? Judaism? Not the Right. Not the Center. Not the Great “Undecided” Voter.

You probably don’t believe it. You’re probably reading just to argue. But three minutes from now, you’ll be armed. Armed and ready to do verbal combat. Armed and ready to defend your Trump vote. Armed and read to win any intellectual confrontation. Think it’s impossible? Keep reading. You’ll find out defending your vote for Trump is easier than you could imagine. Your opponent will be standing there, jaw moving, lips quivering, voice lost, brain scrambled.

Elections have consequences. One consequence that we’ve all experienced: when you elect a street fighter, you get street fights. Another consequence that terrorists are experiencing: when you elect a street-fighter patriot, terrorists die. President Trump tonight reminded so many of us why we elected him. Because he’s a street fighter. Because he’s a patriot. Because there are bad people who wish us harm, and Donald Trump is okay with killing them.

You know it’s coming. Some fake news hack will claim the whole Foxconn-Wisconsin deal was a plot to find a new job for Reince Priebus. Reince Priebus, the erstwhile White House chief of staff who prides himself on blocking deplorables from the White House posts they deserve, has been relieved of duties. He’s on his way back to native Wisconsin where Foxconn is building a $10 billion plant. Maybe Foxconn needs an establishment-connected middle manager.

I campaigned for and voted for Donald Trump. I stand 100% behind Trump today. I support Trump because he’s a fighter. He’s a man of action. Trump prosecutes his causes, he doesn’t navel gaze. Jeff Sessions is a good man. He’s a good Washington man. He has standards of decorum. Standards I admire. Trump has no standards of decorum. But I voted for Trump because history has made decorum a liability, even a vice.

When Reagan was president, we wanted him to hit back harder on the press. We wanted him to put Sam Donaldson in his place. We wanted him to call out the fake news. [caption id=“attachment_22208” align=“aligncenter” width=“750”] 2/5/1981 President Reagan during an interview with Sam Donaldson of ABC News Leslie Stahl of CBS News and Judith Woodruff of NBC News with James Brady at the Cross Hall White House Library[/caption]

“I don’t agree.” Some folks disagreed with my instant assessment of the Syrian strike. My assessment: Trump’s surprise military attack will shift four narratives in Trump’s favor: ** Trump is Hitler: dead ** Trump is a Russian agent: dead ** Trump is incompetent: dying ** Trump is a lightweight among world leaders: dead In other words, it took 59 cruise missiles to blow up the left’s anti-Trump narratives. But my friends disagree.

I’ve changed my mind on priority. Instead of going to tax reform next, President Trump should work on that big-league infrastructure bill. Now. Fast. President Trump needs a big win because power is in perception. He also needs to put Democrats in a bind. Plus, he needs to prove he can pass big legislation without all GOP factions on board. The solution is infrastructure. During the campaign, Trump spoke of a massive building project to rejuvenate our roads, modernize our airports, and more.

Without power, principles are platitudes. Consider this a favor to the Freedom Caucusers. Those folks can’t see past the end of their own principles. Knowing the Freedom Caucus people pretty well, I know they’re very happy with Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. I know they’d be very miserable if Gorsuch were rejected and Trump had to nominate someone who could win a few Democrat votes. It’s all about power.

Today, President Trump changed the game. He changed the Prisoner’s Dilemma (coordination) into a game of Chicken (competition). Lifer Republicans have no experience with games of chicken. They were raised on coordination games. By changing the game to Chicken, Donald Trump greatly increased the chances that phony Paul Ryan’s healthcare will PASS. Here’s why briefly. Psychologically, people always think they have more time. Republicans, in particular, believe time is limitless. Lifelong Republicans think they can delay any decision until the decision they want is a given.

The television activists at CNN look like college seniors who learned upon returning from winter break that credit requirements for graduation were just upped from 120 hours to 180 hours. And there ain’t grandfathering! Diehard NeverTrumpers attack Trump supporters on social media like bitter, divorcing spouses locked in a pitched custody battle. And there ain’t no reconciliation! Establishment Republicans, Democrats who count on union support, the more radical unions like SEIU and NEA, Planned Parenthood baby killers, and tenured communist professors shriek like hormone-crazed adolescents in fall-down hysterics.

I know people, and you probably do too, who are out of work from the United Steel Granite City (aka Granite City Steel) closure. It’s disheartening and depressing for people who worked hard all those years, thrown into the street because of bad trade deals and stifling regulations. But President Trump has ordered the Keystone Pipeline renegotiated to require American steel pipes. That’s great news for our friends and neighbors in GC.

Trump’s enemies took refuge in the self-created narrative that his campaign was 100% American showmanship. The crooked press and the corrupt establishment, while dissing Trump publicly, scoffed privately. They “knew” his supporters were idiots and yahoos—marginally functional Neanderthals from America’s unreconstructed backwoods whose ability to think, handicapped by genetics, was further crippled by the moonshine distilled in the shed behind their putrid outhouse for personal consumption by their incest-ridden family of knuckle-dragging racist homophobes.

Jim Durbin called me this evening. “Are you excited?” he asked. Jim was in the crowd at the very first Tea Party in St. Louis, February 27, 2009. A cold Friday. He and more than a thousand other folks took off work and school to see what this protest was all about. Like so many others, Jim knew America needed a change. A big one. A change built on the hopes and dreams and fierce independence of ordinary people.

Have you ever noticed that twins have a pecking order? Even identical twins born minutes apart show a subtle seniority complex. Usually the first-born twin leads the second-born. Makes you wonder how these Peterson twins will relate to each other, doesn’t it? Because of the time change at the end of daylight saving time, the second-born twin is officially older than the first. That’ll be interesting to watch. And if you find yourself pondering the oddness of those twins' birth order, you can easily find yourself pondering America’s little sister relationship to the UK.

Sometimes I forget what originally drove me to call for a tea party protest in St. Louis. One motivation was fear of missing out because a dozen other cities were planning protests. Another driver was a desire change the direction of the country. And at least some of it was the frustrated actor in me looking for an outlet. Since two-thirds of those motivations appeal only to me, let’s focus on the middle one: change the country.

If your favorite player hits a home run or scores a goal, but your favorite team loses, what have you accomplished? If an athlete you despise makes a horrible error but the hated team he plays for wins the championship, how do you feel? In several races across Missouri, some people seem willing to lose the war if it means they can win their private battles. That’s pretty sad, isn’t it?

https://youtu.be/pm8n9qVIK_8 The more you learn about people like William, the more you look forward to President Trump. Make America Great Again

This post is about why you should vote for Eric Greitens. But first, let’s take a stroll down memory lane. Remember August 2015? It was hot, of course, but everybody was talking about when Trump would fade. For example, here’s the RCP Afternoon Edition from August 7, the day after the first GOP debate: Whose Party Is It, Anyway? - Molly Ball, The Atlantic The Republican Debate Was Awesome - David Harsanyi, The Federalist You Cannot Embarrass Donald Trump - Ezra Klein, Vox The Beginning of the End for Trump - Ed Rogers, Washington Post Martin O’Malley, the Dems' Fallback?

I really want to go to bed, but my brain won’t sleep until I type this out. Hillary Clinton told us Trump won the debate with her final answer. Final answer. An audience member asked the closing question. He challenged the candidates to say something nice about their opponents. Hillary went first. The right way to answer those screwball questions is to say something nice and sit down. I’ll explain why in a moment.

Frank Luntz—no fan of Donald J. Trump—said it best: he came into the second debate believing the race was over, but he came out believing Trump is back in the race. I realize CNN bought a poll that said Clinton won the debate. But CNN has a history of lying, cheating, and hiding facts. I wouldn’t bet a wooden nickel on anything I heard on CNN. I watched most of the debate at a bar in South St.

People in the media and the GOP are acting like they learned something on Friday. That’s when the Washington Post released an audio (later conjoined with video) of Donald Trump talking lewd about his exploits with women. I say media people and Republicans are “acting” like they learned something, because they didn’t. We didn’t. Everybody who’s paid attention to the race (or pop culture) already knew how Trump is. Everybody knows Trump brags about his sexual prowess and how women melt around him.

Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood audio has a lot of people cringing. Especially a lot of men who remember the things they’ve said about women around other men. And I’m talking about men you respect and admire like husbands and dads and brothers. Comedians know what I ’m talking about. I won’t bore you with the biology of it all, but you probably realize that men and women are fundamentally different. Especially when it comes to reproductive success.

Donald Trump missed numerous opportunities to use humor to destroy Hillary Clinton Monday night. The clearest example was on Lester Holt’s question on cyber security. Hillary went first and gave a long, robotic answer, hitting all the buzzwords her handlers made her memorize. Trump countered with a similar answer. But Trump could have crippled Hillary with a single line: If you’re worried about cyber security, don’t elect a woman who runs an email server out of her basement.

We’re getting close, folks. So close you can feel it. Close your eyes and feel the soft, warm breath on the back of your neck. (Now open your eyes and continue reading. You’re such a good reader.) As you watch the polls shift rapidly toward Trump, you might wonder what’s happening. What’s happening is completely natural, but it’s not normal. Elections don’t usually go this way. And two psychological phenomena are working to deliver the Trump landslide I predicted long ago.

Politico announced Tuesday: Clinton’s Advisors Tell Her to Prep for a Landslide Inquisitor said the same day: Hillary Clinton Campaign Preparing for a Landslide The stories beneath those headlines spoke of the intense hubris inside the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. Their “experts” declared the race over on Tuesday. Assured of a landslide, Clinton stopped campaigning and turned to what the Clinton’s do best: extorting money from the ultra-rich.

Donald Trump will land in Mexico City. He’s there for a summit meeting with Mexico’s President Pena Nieto. Before Trump even woke up this morning, the Washington Post declared the future meeting a complete disaster that Trump will never recover from. The Post predicted a complete visual and verbal disaster even though there’s no historical evidence on which to base such a prediction. The WaPo is probably projecting its wishes, not its beliefs.

If you enjoy this post, you have to thank your fellow reader, Tony, for reading the whole TIME article from yesterday’s post. He pointed out more similarities between 1980 and 2016. Especially Reagan’s gaffes and Democrats' complacency. First, the gaffes. You hear about Trump stepping on his own applause lines. He announced Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway the day after the best speech of his life (until then). He wondered aloud (via Twitter) what Mr.

You probably remember that in September 1980 voters couldn’t wait to cast a vote for Reagan. If you remember it like that, you remember wrong. At least a little wrong. TIME magazine examined voter sentiment in its September 15, 1980, issue. Voters that year sounded a lot like voters this year. Here’s how TIME’s Ed Magnuson summarized the voters of 1980: Disenchanted, but not apathetic. Caring about issues, although much more concerned about character.

Why did Trump beat Ted Cruz? Probably the biggest reason is that Trump talks purpose while Cruz talks policy and principles. When people hear Trump, they hear a purpose that aligns with their purpose. I know I do. And it’s similar to the purpose Arthur C. Brooks explained in his great book, The Conservative Heart. Ted Cruz never seemed to have a purpose, just policies and principles. Cruz spoke of abstract principles and left it to the people to figure out if those principles would make their lives better or worse.

Contrasts. Two Politico stories, just weeks apart, demonstrate the remarkable contrasts between the two candidates for president. The headline of the Trump story tells it all: Trump raised $32 million with RNC, but kept only a fraction. And the Hillary story: Leaked emails show officials tried to obscure the fact that Clinton allowed states to keep only a tiny fraction of proceeds from joint fundraising. Trump is on Team America.

After the DNCLeak stories, I think Bernie fans deserve a break. Since you’re probably looking for someone to vote for—someone who’s anti-establishment and outside the political class—you might be thinking about Trump. This might help: 25% offthe ultimate guide to turning from anti-Trump to . . . voting for Trump. I did it. You can, too. My book will help. To get the 25% discount (that’s like $2.50 in your pocket), just give me your email address and vouch that you Feel Berned.

You might think big embarrassing mistakes will get you fired, but they don’t. As long as you keep making different kinds of mistakes and your managers know what they’re doing (big “if”), you’ll be fine. Just don’t make the same kind of mistake over and over again. And it helps to work for a guy like Tom Watson or Donald Trump. While the dollar amount has changed over time, the other details are pretty consistent.

Wow! Larry Kudlow really like Turning On Trump. You can listen to my interview with Larry here. My hit starts at 1:36:48, but the whole show is great. [audio preload=“auto” mp3=“https://hennessysview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Kudlow-Hennessy.mp3”][/audio] On Wednesday, Mark Reardon and I had a great Trump conversation onKMOX Radio. You can listen to that here. You should probably follow Mark on twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkReardonKMOX [audio mp3=“https://hennessysview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Reardon-hennessy.mp3” preload=“auto”][/audio] And if you missed it, Jamie Allman was so gracious and kind to have me onThe Allman Report on Friday.

A lot of people seem to be mad at Trump. You might be one of them. You probably think you know why you’re mad at him. For instance, you might not like what he said about the judge in a lawsuit he’s involved with. Or maybe you didn’t like what he said about Rosie O’Donnell. You might even be mad that he said Saddam Hussein was a bad man who was good at killing terrorists.

https://youtu.be/d02S3EMY6m8 Read all about my new book here

Okay, let me explain this in the simplest possible way… you…are…an…idiot. –Scott Adams, Dilbert Lately…the Peter Principle has given way to the “Dilbert Principle.” The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. ― Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle’s-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions

As an American, I am proud of the people from whose loins our nation sprang. United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union. The Brits rejected globalist, elitist threats and insults to vote for independence. Like America did in 1776. Savor this moment in history. You were alive to see a nation reject foreign tyranny. Every Brit who voted LEAVE showed courage and love of freedom. God bless them all.

You knew it would happen, didn’t you? Corey Lewandowski, the obscure, small-potatoes political operative from a tiny state couldn’t possibly run a presidential campaign from start to victory, could he? But this isn’t about Corey Lewandowski. It’s about the next the president of the United States, Donald Trump. And you’ll want to read it all because it’s so true. So true. I read a summary of what happened at Lewandowski’s dismissal meeting, and it sounded exactly like an episode of The Apprentice.

Richard Brookhiser called the moment’s start, and I called its death. But before we get into that, are you as surprised as I am about Zuckerberg’s war on gays? You would think that a jihadist attack on a gay nightclub would trigger an anti-terror backlash against Islamic terrorists, would you not? Anti-Gay Jihad Instead, America’s radical left has declared a jihad against gays. Leading this jihad is Imam Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.

I admire David French, David French is running for president, but you probably have no idea who he is, right? No, it’s not Buffy and Jody’s man-nanny from the 1960s sitcom Family Affair. That was Mr. French played by Sebastian Cabot, and I forget the character’s first name. Nor is it the guy who publishes most stage play scripts. That’s Samuel French. (Only theatre people will know that name.) If you’re a hard-core conservative or you read National Review for any reason, you might have heard of David French.

Try not to imagine the worldwide television audience for the Trump vs. Sanders debate. Super Bowl ratings would look skimpy by comparison. Trump vs. Sanders would be the most watched political event ever. And I’m including the future in “ever.” And a Trump vs. Sanders debate would effectively kill Democrats' chances in November. This is huge. Yesterday, I wrote about Trump’s remarkable honesty at his press conference, but that wasn’t the big story of the day.

Donald Trump just exploded the heads of professional talkers on CNN. It was honestly funny. Trump reached 1,237 delegates today, clinching the nomination of the Republican Party. He will be the 45th President of the United States, and his press conferences will be the most popular show on television. It will be huge, believe me. And after the press conference, Trump did something that might have sealed the deal with American voters.

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about “principles” lately. Ted Cruz’s entire campaign centered “conservative principles” and being a “principled conservative.” Lately, though, most of that “principles” talk is about how Donald Trump has caused good conservatives to abandon their principles. Maybe that’s true. In fact, I’m starting to believe it. The one principle that many conservatives have abandoned and encouraged others to abandon: keeping your word. The lead advocate for abandoning this principle of keeping one’s word is Jonah Goldberg of National Review and the American Enterprise Institute.

You might have noticed that my predictions have been remarkably accurate lately, have you not? For example, on Sunday, May 1, I predicted Ted Cruz would suspend his campaign after getting trounced in Indiana. Two days later, Cruz lost the Indiana primary to Donald Trump 53 to 36. At the time I wrote, many pundits and pollster still believed Cruz could win that Indiana race, and everyone believed Cruz was telling the truth when he said repeatedly he was staying in the race to Cleveland unless Trump reached 1,237 delegates before then.

Nothing happens in politics by accident. Every move has an angle. Some players are better than others. Paul Ryan and Donald Trump are two of the best players alive, but one is better than the other. We’ll see that tomorrow. House Speaker Paul Ryan has set aside Thursday for meetings with his party’s nominee for President. Every nominee for president meets with the senior members of his party’s Congressional caucus, so there’s nothing odd about the meeting.

Some pro-life activists like Erick Erickson are plotting ways to sabotage Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. They probably haven’t stopped to think. If they succeed in defeating Trump, they will be culpable in many, many abortions. That’s a lot of guilt for a guy like Erickson to carry around, isn’t it? Chances are Congress won’t introduce any major abortion laws in the next four years. That means the abortion battle will remain in the courts.

People think they’re rational, but we’re not. For example, on many issues,** Trump’s positions are almost identical to Ronald Reagan’s.** When it comes to abortion, trade, taxes, foreign policy and the military, and entitlements like Social Security, you can’t fit a dime between Reagan and Trump. So why do people see Trump as far to the left of Reagan? Contrasts and comparisons. Reagan ran against George Bush and John B. Anderson.

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill I will choose a path that’s clear I will choose freewill –RUSH, Freewill Last July and August and once in September, I was down on Donald Trump. I predicted that a Trump nomination would be the last nail in the coffin of conservatism.

Every prediction about Trump has been wrong. Except for two. Ann Coulter and Scott Adams predicted Trump would win the nomination and, eventually, the White House in a landslide. They were right. World leaders expect Trump to win, and they are lining up to make all his crazy assertions look like brilliant predictions. Former Mexico president Vicente Fox apologized to Trump, and Trump graciously accepted. That’s a sign that Mexicans expect Trump to become the next US president.

If you’ve ever cheated on your spouse just to get back at your daughter for dating or marrying the wrong man, you’re probably a #nevertrump person like George Will. Suppose your daughter married a man you didn’t approve of. You would probably respond by cheating on your own spouse, would you not? Having an affair would teach your daughter a lesson, right? And if your spouse and your friends and your other children suffered, too bad.

I’m for Trump. I like stating the positive. So I’m for Trump. TheNR Against Trump writers can own it if Hillary wins and appoints a Supreme Court justice who’s to the left of Bader-Ginsberg as Scalia’s replacement. They’ll take that to their graves. For me, I’m for Trump. I’ll admit he wasn’t my first choice, but he was far from my last choice. My first choice, Ben Carson, endorsed The Donald.

I have no idea who will win the Indiana primary 72 hours from the time I write. But the people inside Ted Cruz’s campaign seem to have an idea. And it’s not good for them. Cruz’s top team expects their candidate to lose. And Senator Cruz seems to have accepted that outcome. Expectations Matter More Than Preferences Regular readers know that polls that ask “who do you think will win” trump polls that ask “who do you intend to vote for” or even “who did you vote for?

I was a pretender. In 2012, I pretended I believed Mitt Romney would win. But I knew better. I just didn’t have the heart to tell the truth to the volunteers banging doors and working call lists from our election office in South County. But I knew Romney would lose. I suspected the GOP would not regain the Senate. When some of our hardest workers showed up to help break down the office and move our belongings, I couldn’t look at them.

That was a strategic kill-shot, to borrow Scott Adams’s word. And it changes everything for conservatives. After a so-so debate performance and in the middle of a 16-hour verbal assault from Marco Rubio, Trump went nuclear. But not the way everyone would expect Trump to go nuclear. Trump didn’t need to invent a brilliant new put-down line to counter Marco. Instead, he calmly introduced Chris Christie to 10,000 fans in Texas.

The world is about to end. Or civil war is about to break out in Dayton, Ohio. Believe it? Glenn Beck, Erick Erickson, and other Republicans have convinced a lot of people that we are doomed if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. I know some people who are nearly incapacitated with fear and grief after last night’s Nevada caucuses. Because they listen to Glenn Beck. Sad! Here’s the thing: **nothing is as bad as you think it will be while you’re thinking about it.

Donald Trump probably reads my blog first thing every day. Until today, I figured Donald Trump never heard of me. He’s never mentioned me in his tweet storms. He’s never called me an idiot or a liar during a debate. He’s never pointed to one of my many egregious typos and tweeted: “@whennessy left out the word ‘for’. Confused everyone. Worst blogger in politics. Just sad.” (The guy has 2.

I got tire of scrolling. Politico shows the results of each county in South Carolina, my state of residence from 1985 to 1992. Abbeville: Trump Aiken: Trump Allendale: Trump Anderson: Trump Bamberg: Trump Barnwell: Trump Beaufort: Trump Berkeley: Trump It goes on and on and on. Donald Trump not only won the geography, he won the demography: Evangelical Christians: Trump Born-again Christians: Trump Conservative Voters: Trump Moderate Voters: Trump Young Voters: Trump

Pope Francis said today that Donald Trump is not a Christian. I can only assume the Pope has secretly cut a deal with The Donald. “Pope. Donald here. I need you to give me some crap about the wall.” “Si.” “Just, uh, call me a Muslim or something. Make it look sincere, ya know?” “Si.” So the Pope stands at the U.S.-Mexico border and says anyone who wants to build a wall “is not a Christian.

Yes, you can win a contest before it starts. I gotta tell ya, the people at Fox News are stupid. Dumb. Ignorant. Pliable. Oafish. Any word you want you to use that means cognitively challenged (for the politically correct). But the Fox Newsmorons have a lot of company at National Review. Trump is playing these media elites like a fiddle. When The Donald says “dance,” they dance. When he says “cower,” they cower.

“Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1825. National Review has entered dangerous territory: they have inadvertently made the case for Trump. An angry screed by Kevin Williamson titled “Our Post-Literate Politics” (later renamed to “What’s a Book?") makes the case that Trump supporters are illiterate, uneducated, dim-witted, racist, homophobes. To wit (via Breitbart.com’s John Nolte):

Reading two excellent articles by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight (here and here), I remembered a thought that passed through my mind last Friday. After reading some of National Review’s “Against Trump” issue,I wrote blog post. To me the NR issue showed the magazine is out of touch with voters. I’m not talking about traditional, reliable, motivated, and informed primary voters.** I’m talking about the broader pool of voters who vote in general elections every four, eight, or twelve years** and occasionally in local elections.

They. Don’t. Care. The conservative war against Trump won’t work. I get why National Review and The Weekly Standard devote whole issues of magazines to Trump’s lack of conservative bonafides. I appreciate it. Their work is important. **But their tactic will prove completely useless in defeating Trump. **In fact, the fight is already over, and the cover story proves it. Conservative magazines–online or on paper–are supposed to weigh events and people against conservative principles and pass judgment.

I am a mess. I am a terrible father, a crappy husband (ask my ex-wives), and a difficult employee. I do a lot of things poorly. Most things, in fact. Especially the things I “have” to do. Authority irritates me. While I’m terrible at following plans, I write a week’s worth of blogs on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The pattern keeps me sane. Or semi-sane. I supplement those when events warrant.

Dave: You hear from your folks, Mooch? Moocher: Yeah, my dad called. He wanted to know if the house was sold. He could use the money something fierce. Dave: Well, you can come and live with me when it’s sold. In Italy, everybody lives together. Moocher: [laughs] Since you won that Italian bike, man, you’ve been acting weird. You’re really getting to think you’re Italian, aren’t you? Cyril: I wouldn’t mind thinking I was someone myself.

I like to say I hate electoral politics. Maybe I just want people to think I’m the kind of person who hates electoral politics. (We are all capable of being wrong about ourselves.) I have to say, briefly, that this was the most encouraging Republican debate since . . . 1980? These are all serious people, and I’m including Trump. They all love America, and not just what they might get from America.

So many battles are fought in war and in civilian life, and nothing is gained by their victory. Every battle we fight will result in a gain for us or we will not fight . . . There is no great gain in merely being right. To be right about some unimportant subject is not important. –General George S. Patton Jonah Goldberg explains the problem of Trump better than anyone:

There seems to be a certain air of inevitability that Trump will win the GOP nomination for President. According to a new poll, 57 percent of Republican voters expect that Trump will be the party’s candidate next year. Why is that important? Expectations Beat Preferences It’s important because expectations are far better predictors of actual winners than preference polls. From a 2012 NY Times story by David Leonhardt: Over the last 60 years, poll questions that asked people which candidate they expected to win have been a better guide to the outcome of the presidential race than questions asking people whom they planned to vote for, the study found.

It’s sad that Donald Trump has inspired so many good conservatives to promote fantasies about the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court addressed the issue of birthright citizenship directly, and Mark Levin and Laura Ingram know it. They are Constitutional lawyers. Both Levin and Ingraham are familiar with United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) which established, thoroughly, that citizenship by birth has been the law of the land since before the Declaration of Independence and was codified by the 14th Amendment.

If you lack a unique, differentiating value, your only play is price. In business, you command the price play by being very, very big and very, very efficient. In presidential politics, you’re unique or you close up shop and go home. Commodities don’t win executive offices. Usually. Even though it’s early, only four Republican candidates for president have differentiating value propositions: ** Ben Carson ** Donald Trump ** Carly Fiorina ** Ted Cruz

The next US President must be a great communicator. Distilling complex and controversial problems into mental models accessible to large numbers of people is not deception–it’s brilliance. The reason we hang onto sound bites isn’t because we’re stupid–it’s because we’re busy. We all don’t have time to earn masters-degree understanding of every issue facing society and government. Honest, accurate distillations of the complex ideas allow us to choose and act quickly.

I should have gone to bed. I wanted to finish a great book called The Conservative Heart by Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute. The book left me feeling happy, proud, and inspired. I should have gone to bed as soon as I finished the book. But the feeling of having read something wonderful wanted to linger, so I sat with it for a bit. Then I really screwed up.

Last week’s poll asked for your degree of support for Donald Trump’s candidacy. This poll received far less attention than the Missouri GOP Governor poll of the previous week, as only 60 people responded. On the plus side, there was no detectable cheating on the Trump poll. One Word: Polarization [caption id=“attachment_16313” align=“aligncenter” width=“600”]Histogram of Trump Poll[/caption] Respondents had choices from 0 to 5 to indicate their degree of support for Trump, with 0 = No Support and 5 = Total Support.

Take a look at Drudge. I’ll wait. The day doesn’t really matter. It’s always full of stuff that makes you think rivets are flying out of the planet like a jalopy in a cartoon. ** Two girls beat another girl into convulsions over the course of eight minutes while cowardly young men quiver in fear. (But an old lady steps in and protects the victim.) ** Syrian security opens fire on demonstrators killing 90.