MILWAUKEE — Donald J. Trump — he of the glamorous wives and high-profile romances — likes to boast of his prowess with women.

But among female voters, he is having less success, with women viewing him unfavorably by more than three to one, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll.

Now, in an apparent effort to shore up his support among women after a series of missteps, Mr. Trump is enlisting his wife, Melania, on the campaign trail.

Wearing a short baby-blue dress, Mrs. Trump joined her husband on stage at the Milwaukee Theater on Monday night for his final rally in Wisconsin — a subdued event with a crowd that was less than capacity — before the state’s primary on Tuesday.

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/us/politics/melania-trump-campaign.html

After winning only six delegates in Wisconsin, and with Ted Cruz poaching delegates in states he has won, like Louisiana, Donald Trump either wins on the first ballot at Cleveland, or Trump does not win.

Yet, as that huge, roaring reception he received in his first post-Wisconsin appearance in Bethpage, N.Y., testifies, the Donald remains not only the front-runner, but the most exciting figure in the race.

Moreover, after the New York, New England, mid-Atlantic and California primaries, Trump should be within striking distance of the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination.

He will then have to persuade uncommitted delegates to back him, and perhaps do a deal with one of the defeated candidates, Marco Rubio or John Kasich, to win the remaining few needed to go over the top.

In 1976, Ronald Reagan, shy of the delegates he needed to defeat President Ford, offered second place on his ticket to Sen. Richard Schweiker, a moderate from Pennsylvania.

This brainstorm of Reagan campaign manager John Sears did not produce the required delegates, and Reagan received an envelope from a conservative Congressman with 30 dimes in it—30 pieces of silver.

Still, Reagan was right to roll the dice.

But assume Trump reaches 1,237 on the first ballot.

Would the GOP establishment accept his leadership, back his ticket, and help to bring together all the elements—nationalist, Tea Party, conservative and moderate—of a grand coalition to defeat Hillary Clinton?

Or would the establishment refuse to endorse Trump, ensure his defeat, and hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered party, as Govs. Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney assumed they would do after they deserted Barry Goldwater in 1964.

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/the-delusional-establishment/

In the 24 hours since her profile of Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, appeared in GQ magazine, the Russian-American journalist has received a torrent of antisemitic, vitriolic and threatening messages from supporters of the Republican frontrunner.

In the deeply disturbing response to her piece, Ioffe said she sees a frightening future of what freedom of the press – and the country – might look like under a president Trump.

“What happens if Donald Trump is elected?” Ioffe said. “We’ve seen the way he bids his supporters to attack the media, his proposal to change libel laws to make it easier to sue journalists.”

On Thursday, she answered a phone call from an anonymous caller who played a Hitler speech. She received another call from “Overnight Caskets”. On Twitter, users posted photos of her face superimposed on a mug shot from Auschwitz. The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist site, attacked Ioffe in a blog post titled: “Empress Melania Attacked by Filthy Russian Kike Julia Ioffe in GQ!”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/28/julia-ioffe-journalist-melania-trump-antisemitic-abuse

Failure to Counter Trump

Lots of American media outlets, especially large TV stations, have viewed Trump so far as entertainment. No word is too dirty to be put on the air somewhere, and Trump has a screen presence unlike any other candidate. Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich described the mechanics of this election to the hosts of "Fox & Friends," a show on the arch-conservative Fox News channel thusly: "Donald Trump gets up in the morning, tweets to the entire planet at no cost, picks up the phone, calls you, has a great conversation for about eight minutes, which would have cost him a ton in commercial money, and meanwhile his opponents are all out there trying to raise the money to run an ad." Of the show, which long offered Trump a regular platform, Gingrich said: "You could say that Trump is the candidate 'Fox & Friends' invented."

A power dynamic of superiority and subordination has emerged with Trump and some journalists that should not exist in a democracy.

Investigative reporting is one of the fundamental elements of democracy. It exists to bring to light the kind of information the powerful would often prefer to hide. In no other country is this tradition as strong as it is in the US, the home of the Watergate investigation. But when it comes to Trump, investigative journalism has failed. In contrast to, for example, Hillary Clinton in this election, there have been no big, groundbreaking pieces of reporting dealing with his past, his serious financial mistakes and bankruptcies that cost the state and society dearly. About the brutality he displays when people get in his way. About the rumors about his alleged ties to the New York mafia. About his tax returns which, unlike all the other candidates, he has not yet released.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-and-the-failure-of-the-us-media-a-1082401.html

One of the major dilemmas for the Republicans in the US is that Trump does not want to play the game of "We hate Russia" which is the main driver for the US military expenditure. 

“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do,” she said.

At the 2008 Democratic convention, Obama had said: “Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do.”

There was another section too that some writers would say was borrowed or paid homage to; others would call it plagiarism.

Until some eagle-eyed viewers called her out, it had all seemed to go so well for Melania in this rare public appearance at the Republican national convention. That may have been relative and had something to do with the two hours of relentless nationalism, scaremongering and emotional manipulation that preceded her.

Compared to the politicians who went before, including the raving Rudy Giuliani, the polyglot former model was a positively Evita-esque breath of fresh air. At last, a flash of razzle-dazzle we had all been promised.

read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/19/melania-trump-speech-republican-national-convention

See toon at top...

As Melania speechwriter copied some elements from a Michelle Obama speech, we are also advised without any qualms that Trump took whole slab of ideas and words from Richard Nixon...

Donald Trump’s campaign has made no secret of the fact that his Republican presidential nomination acceptance speech was modeled in part on Richard Nixon’s address to the 1968 Republican National Convention.

That’s right, they openly compared their candidate to Richard Nixon, one of two U.S. presidents to be impeached and the only one to resign. No one forced them to do this. Looking at the two speeches side by side, it is clear that the Trump team was not kidding around.

Trump’s speech bore strong thematic similarities to Nixon’s. While Trump didn’t directly quote or cite Nixon, his address shared many of the former president’s focuses on “law and order,” respect for America and the idea of an ignored, forgotten American people.

Law and Order

Both Trump and Nixon came out swinging strongly to paint a picture of America as a lawless, crime-ridden wasteland in need of a savior.

After a short introduction where he thanked his primary competitors and offered thoughts for the ailing former President Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon got right into it:

As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame.

We hear sirens in the night.

We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad.

We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home.

And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish.

Did we come all this way for this?

Trump wasted even less time, launching into his description of “America In Crisis” in the fourth paragraph of his speech.

Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims.

I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored.

The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.

It is finally time for a straightforward assessment of the state of our nation.

In 1968, there were uprisings in many cities as black people demanded justice and equal rights in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Similarly, the high profile killings of black people in the last few years have led to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for police reform.

read  more: http://fusion.net/story/328744/donald-trump-richard-nixon-speech/

US President Donald Trump and his wife are set to visit India on 24-25 February with Trump's Daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both White House Advisers; the US first family is scheduled to travel to Ahmedabad, Agra, and New Delhi. 

US First Lady Melania Trump is expected to attend a happiness curriculum class at a Delhi government school during her visit to the capital next week alongside her husband President Donald Trump.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/202002221078377142-dont-worry-be-happy-mel...

meanwhile:

The movie studio behind the Oscar-winning South Korean film “Parasite” responded Thursday to US President Donald Trump’s criticism that a foreign-language film should not have won best picture at the 2020 Academy Awards.

"Understandable, he can't read," Neon tweeted from its official account, linking to a video of Trump complaining about the best picture award going to a foreign movie, which played in the US with subtitles.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/society/202002211078374838-he-cant-read-studio-b...

But:

“I love Hindu,” Donald Trump proclaimed during his presidential campaign in 2016. That adoration of India’s majority population, and America’s richest and most obviously pro-Trump minority, may have just gotten deeper.

On his first visit to India next week, Mr. Trump claims, he has been promised a welcoming crowd of “10 million” by the country’s Hindu-supremacist prime minister, Narendra Modi. (Never mind that the total population of the city where Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump plan to hold a joint rally is a little over eight million.)

Last September at a rock-concert-like rally at a Houston football stadium, Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump walked hand-in-hand, the two stocky strongmen looking like brothers-in-arms. Certainly, nowhere in the world can Mr. Trump encounter a profounder fraternal spirit than among India’s present rulers. India under them fulfills, to a startling degree, the American president’s irascible fantasy of what the United States should be: a country cravenly surrendering its traditions of law and decency before a perpetually inflamed and ham-handed autocrat.

Mr. Trump has controversially pardoned some white-collar criminals, including Michael Milken, and might extend clemency to Roger Stone. He can only envy the culture of impunity in India. Charges of murder and kidnapping have long pursued Amit Shah, Mr. Modi’s closest confidant and India’s home minister, but the judge in his case mysteriously died soon after Mr. Modi became prime minister in 2014 and the next judge swiftly acquitted Mr. Shah.

Mr. Trump has been forced to bypass Congress to push his measures against immigrants and Muslims. Denouncing Muslim immigrants as “termites,” Mr. Shah has pushed comprehensive laws against Muslim immigrants through the Indian Parliament and, with equal chutzpah, broken up the only Muslim-majority state in India.

Much outrage in America has correctly focused on the Trump administration’s cruel separation of children from their parents at detention centers. It has been barely noticed in India that Mr. Modi’s government has illegally detained numerous children in the valley of Kashmir, now in the midst of an endless crackdown.

Mr. Trump can expect some pushback from even his regular muse, Fox News. Mr. Modi can rely on uninterrupted sycophancy from almost all of India’s major television channels and newspapers; “Modi toadies” (Salman Rushdie’s term) broadcast uncritically, among other things, the falsehood that Indian fighter jets bombed and killed major terrorists in Pakistan. Whereas Mr. Trump can claim few real fans in Hollywood, Bollywood’s stars jostle to fit their extra-wide grins into Mr. Modi’s selfies.

India today with its groveling political and cultural elite is Mr. Trump’s deepest fantasy, flawlessly realized. A democracy once identified with great names such as Mohandas Gandhi has degenerated into Trumpland — an inferno of systemic brutishness, imbecility and mendacity.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/opinion/trump-india.html

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