Trumplicans will call it "whining"; I say it's a simple, commonsensical statement of fact:
CRUZ: That’s true at first. But let’s be clear. The media has given Donald Trump hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising. When you put Donald — when every press conference is carried live on every television station, and you essentially have a massive in-kind contribution from the media, that has helped create this phenomenon. And then I think an awful lot of reporters — I can’t tell you how many media outlets I hear have this great expose on Donald, on different aspects of his business dealings, or his past, but they said, you know what, we’re going to hold it to June or July. We’re not going to run it now.
(CROSSTALK) DICKERSON: You’re saying reporters have told you that? They have told…
CRUZ: Absolutely. We have gotten multiple…
DICKERSON: And from which organizations have they told you?
That might seem like a reasonable question, but it was also an attempt by Mr. Dickerson to divert the story from "embargoed Trump scandals" to "Cruz-media pissing match". Which helps explain why Cruz might appear to be ducking the question:
CRUZ: You know, look, I’m not going to out media outlets, but I can tell you there is so much there. When was the last time people are bringing up his tax returns, for example. We had a debate last night, didn’t hear a word about his tax returns. Every other serious candidate…
DICKERSON: Well, you could have brought it up.
CRUZ: I could have, and I do often. But as Mitt Romney rightly observed, the fact that Donald won’t hand over his tax returns suggests there’s a bombshell in there. The fact that journalists are not raising the question of what Donald Trump told the New York Times editorial board, the reports are…
DICKERSON: But the journalists brought it up, which gave you the platform to talk about it. So, surely they are. BuzzFeed wrote about it, so they are talking about it.
CRUZ: I promise you, come the general election, that will be the singular focus of the media. And I think Republicans, we have been burned by that before. We’re not interested in losing again, particularly when the stakes, I think, are catastrophic.
Makes perfect political sense. Trump, wittingly or unwittingly, is in this race to sabotage Republican chances of finally regaining the presidency; he's the weakest general election candidate of the remaining four; and he's leading the GOP race. That's the outcome the media wants to ensure, and they're doing everything they can to bring it about and ensure that Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton succeed Barack Obama and relieve him of the need to formally suspend Amendment XXII and declare himself president-for-life. Which means the ocean of Trump dirt and accompanying media campaign will not materialize until Trump has that 1,237th delegate.
But while the organized media jihad is still waiting in the starting gates, the bombshells are starting to dribble out piecemeal:
Donald Trump had a long relationship with a reputed New Jersey mobster, who gambled at the real estate billionaire's Atlantic City casino, flew on Trump's helicopter, and partied on his yacht, the gangster's daughter reportedly claims.
Trump has denied having a personal relationship with Robert LiButti, who was banned in 1991 from New Jersey casinos for his ties to the late Mafia boss John Gotti, Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo News, reports.
That same year, Trump's hotel casino in Atlantic City, the Trump Plaza, was fined $200,000 by New Jersey regulators for violating anti-discrimination laws involving complaints linked to LiButti's racist behavior inside the casino.
Trump denies knowing the late LiButti (who passed away two years ago) from proverbial Adam, then and now. On which Edith Creamer, LiButti's daughter, calls BS:
"[Trump]'s a liar," she told Yahoo News in the course of two telephone interviews.
"Of course he knew him. I flew in the [Trump] helicopter with [Trump's then wife] Ivana and the kids. My dad flew it up and down [to Atlantic City]. My thirty-fifth birthday party was at the Plaza and Donald was there. After the party, we went on his boat, his big yacht. I like Trump, but it pisses me off that he denies knowing my father. That hurts me."
As you may have already deduced, the same woman who's bitterly denouncing Trump as a liar is also a Trumplican. Which seems only fitting. It seems that he's got the organized crime vote locked up and might actually give Hillary a run for her money in that demographic.
But wait! There's more! - on the "Trump University" fraud....:
Court documents reveal that attorneys for the other side zeroing in on Trump’s claim, as seen in a promotional video, that he chose all the instructors.
“If you don’t learn from the people that we’re going to be putting forward, and these are all people who are handpicked by me,” Trump said in the commercial.
But confronted with questions about the instructors’ lack of real estate experience, Trump acknowledged “he looked at resumes and things but didn’t pick the speakers” and some “slipped through the cracks.” …
He was repeatedly pressed on one instructor CBS News told you about back in September, James Harris. Trump said he didn’t know who he was and said, “I wasn’t running it.”
.....and Trump offering [drumroll] an avalanche of EB-5 guest worker visas to the Red Chinese in order to persuade ChiComm investors to bankroll one of his skyscraper projects:
Yet no skills are required of the wealthy Chinese being courted by a Chinese-subtitled video to help finance a huge Trump-branded tower in New Jersey. The video leads viewers behind the wheel of a car into Jersey City with scenes of the tower, all to the tune of the theme song from The Sopranos, Woke Up This Morning.
The video was produced to help raise tens of millions of dollars through a controversial government program that offers expedited visas to foreign investors overwhelmingly from [Red] China. While the program has many supporters who argue it attracts foreign capital and creates jobs at no U.S. taxpayer cost, congressional overseers and Homeland Security have raised sharp concerns. Applicants are sometimes cleared in less than a month and the critics say the government is essentially selling visas to wealthy foreigners with no proven skills, paving the way for money laundering and compromising national security. …
Trump Bay Street is a fifty-story luxury rental apartment building being built by Kushner Companies, whose chief executive officer, Jared Kushner, is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. It will have an outdoor pool, indoor golf simulator and sweeping views of Lower Manhattan; it adjoins an existing high rise condo, Trump Plaza Residence. The firm that was hired to seek investors, U.S. Immigration Fund, is run by Florida developer Nicholas Mastroianni, who announced a partnership last year with a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Florida.
The visa program is known as EB-5. In exchange for investing at least $500,000 in a project promising to create jobs, foreigners receive a two-year visa with a good chance of obtaining permanent residency for them and their families. In 2014, the most recent year for which records are available, the U.S. issued 10,692 of these visas — 85% to people from [Red] China. [emphases added]
Remarkable, isn't it? Mafia connections, massive swindles, flagrant immigration hypocrisy, and endangering national security out of sheer greed, all in just three stories. Imagine if Trump really were a Republican; he'd have been a grease spot on the floor months ago after getting carpet bombed with these revelations. But he's not a Republican, which means he'll be squashed like a grape three months or so from now, unless he can somehow, some way be stopped from seizing our nomination.
Can the so-called "GOP establishment" REALLY be worse than this, Trumplicans? Wouldn't you rather we actually had a chance to WIN this election? With a REAL Republican?
The message may be sinking in in Florida in the nick of time:
Trump has support from 38% of likely primary voters compared to 30% who back Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz earns 17% support and John Kasich has 10%. Rubio actually leads Trump by 48% to 23% among the nearly one-in-five voters who have already cast their ballots in this “early vote” state. Trump has a 42% to 26% lead among those who have yet to vote. [emphasis added]
That would still translate to about a six-point victory for Trump. However, if you figure in The Donald's chronic tendency to underachieve versus his inflated poll numbers....
....that could mean a narrow Rubio upset in his home State....which Senator Cruz is doing his level best to avert even though he has no realistic shot at winning there.
<sigh>
Even when Trump may finally be stumbling and even faceplanting, his TRUE Republican rivals keep coming to his rescue by continuing to savage one another.
So much for "teamwork" - outside the debate stage anyway.
UPDATE: The latest from Ohio:
Trump leads with 38% to 35% for Kasich, 15% for Ted Cruz, and just 5% for Marco Rubio. The race is pretty fluid though, with only 69% of voters saying they’re committed to their current choice, and 31% saying they might change their minds between now and next Tuesday.
If voters do change their minds- especially supporters of Cruz and Rubio who appear to have little chance of being competitive in the State- Kasich is likely to be the beneficiary. Kasich leads Trump 55/40 if voters had to choose just between the two of them. Rubio voters move to Kasich 75/16 over Trump, Cruz voters do so 69/25, and undecideds would pick him 54/11 if Kasich and Trump ended up being the two candidates they chose between. Kasich is also by far the most broadly popular of the candidates in Ohio with a 70/22 favorability rating- only Trump at 48/44 is also on positive ground among the remaining candidates. If more strategic voting happens in the next week, Kasich is likely to be the beneficiary. [emphasis added]
Throw in Trump's average eight percentage point underperformance versus polling over the past week (and since the last two disastrous debates), and I'd say Kasich holds serve on his home "court".
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