Trump had a bad night

Phillip Klein:
Donald Trump was dismantled in Thursday night's debate in Detroit.

In the face of consistent fire from Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and a tough line of questioning from Fox moderators, Trump struggled more than he has at any debate thus far.

The debate raised a number of doubts about Trump's trustworthiness, business practices and readiness to take on Hillary Clinton in the general election.

On his signature issue, Trump was forced to confirm that he would be flexible on immigration policy, and that he was "softening" his position on high-skilled immigrants.

He took heat from Rubio for employing foreign workers at his Florida hotel and manufacturing his clothing line overseas — a contrast with his campaign rhetoric of protecting the American worker.

Rubio also pointed out that whenever Trump is asked a detailed policy question, he resorts to insults to avoid the question, an attack that was reinforced as Trump repeatedly referred to his opponent as "little Marco."

After Trump claimed that he would balance the budget by eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education, Fox's Chris Wallace interjected that those numbers didn't add up — that eliminating those departments even entirely would fall far short of eliminating the annual deficit. When Trump claimed he would make up the rest by negotiating drug prices with Medicare, Wallace pointed out that this wouldn't be enough either.

Megyn Kelly confronted Trump on his history of changing positions within days, including on the Afghanistan War and allowing in Syrian refugees.
...
His Trump University problems also posed difficult questions for him and Trump responded by saying that it would take years to resolve which gave Cruz an opening to launch on the uncertainty created by the situation.

Trump continues to rely on the post-seminar surveys for his defense in the questions raised about the program, but I find that rather meaningless when the survey was taken before the students even had a chance to use the material in the seminar in a real world environment.  It was not until they found the program did not work for them that they felt defrauded.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more