It was a crazy night to say the least! Hillary and Trump won big, but so did Ted Cruz. Bernie Sanders won several states and many delegates, but lost the New England prize of Massachusetts to Hillary. Rubio won the single state of Minnesota on the GOP side, but Kasich lost Maine to Trump. Ben Carson was missing and no one really knows what he was doing, but he dropped out of the race the day after.
The far-right and their Fox Noise Machine created Trump, and now they know they are stuck with him. If he loses, they lose to the Democrats. But if he wins, they still lose because they have to work with him and kiss up to him forever. There is no way to really win.
Donald Trump can't get over himself, and his followers apparently can't get enough of him either. In spite of hopes from both Dems and Republicans that Trump would get tired of parading around as American's next white hope, he has become the nearly undisputed GOP front runner in the Republican Primary for President of the United States. He won the South Carolina Primary last Tuesday, and easily scooped another win in Nevada.
Meanwhile, little Marco Rubio keeps insisting that his second or third place ties with Ted Cruz are actually wins, and that the longer he stays in the race, the more likely he is to accidentally win something. Or something.
Cruz is just crestfallen that his God has forgotten to anoint him King of Merica yet.
Kasich is hanging on by a slim thread of who-knows-what, and doing embarrassing non-Moderate things like banning funding for Planned Parenthood in Ohio, and saying that women "left the kitchen" to vote for him in SC.
Rebublicans and Fox News are starting to panic at what a train-wreck their Primary Convention is going to be, with low-spending rogue Trump slamming everybody - especially the media - while praising himself to the skies.
No matter how horrible Trump is, they love him. Super Tuesday is looming on March 1st and he's expected to walk away with it. And the world watches in horror.
However, let's remember that this is the Primary Season, and in order to win Trump has had to be vicious towards minorities, immigrants and women (not that he minds) and has even attacked the Pope, and they still vote for him. But the fact is, once we pivot to a contest between Trump and Hillary, he just can't win anymore. He will never get the vote from minority groups, LGBT, women, and mainstream liberals. Oh, some ex-Bernie Libertarians may join him since they have vowed to never vote for Hillary, but the rest of us will just need to show up and vote against him, end of story.
The press be all like 💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡 tonight. #trump#NVcaucus
Hillary Clinton became the first woman to ever win the Iowa Caucus although she was nearly tied in a dead heat with Bernie Sanders for most of the night. Ted Cruz won on the Republican side, snatching victory from Donald Trump, with Marco Rubio coming in a strong third and the rest winning only fractions of points.
The channel of high finance CNBC hosted a GOP Debate the other night, but instead of focusing on money issues, the Moderators were all over the place, asking embarassing questions to surly candidates who dodged, rolled their eyes, and insulted back with gusto. In the words of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, it was a "Crap Sandwich."
"Obviously we had assurances that it was going to be straight-up finance, which is what they do every day," he told Hannity on Thursday. "And what was delivered was just nothing but a crap sandwich. I guarantee you we're going to make sure that CNBC isn't hosting and moderating another debate with our candidates."
Reporters from both conservative and liberal-minded news organizations seem to agree: the CNBC Republican presidential debate was kind of a trainwreck.
That wasn’t really because of the candidates, though — it was because of the moderators. For the first hour, CNBC moderators Becky Quick, John Harwood, and Carl Quintanilla didn’t let candidates interact with each other, resulting in multiple moments of incomprehensible yelling. This may have been because of stricter time limits — this particular 10-candidate debate was only two hours, while the previous Republican debates have spanned three hours.
But constant interruption wasn’t the only problem. Candidates were also highly critical of the CNBC crew, accusing them of being part of the “liberal media.” At one point, Ted Cruz ripped into the moderators for asking what he called unfair and non-substantive questions. And in two instances, audience members actually booed at questions the moderators asked of Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee.
What happened was less a debate among contenders and more a showdown between the candidates and the moderators. Everyone attacked the moderators when they heard a question they didn’t like, and then made a show of their rebelliousness – this was great for anti-media conservatives, but a distraction for everyone else. The moderators had their moments, but they were mostly awful. Frivolous questions about Rubio’s absenteeism or Trump’s “moral character” or fantasy football gave the candidates just enough fodder to avoid answering the hard questions whenever they were asked. The result of all this was two and a half hours of political gas.
Colbert on CBS: "Did ya'll watch the GOP Debate last night on CNBC? (light applause) I'm so sorry. I, uh, I did watch it, and in some ways it was impressive. They managed to thread the needle between confusing and boring... CNBC showed us how to conduct a debate without a shred of respect....And what the moderators lacked in courtesy they made up for in lack of preparation."
So yeah, Moderators had a really bad night!
Loved doing the debate last night on @CNBC. Check out all of the polls! Everyone agrees that Harwood bombed!
As expected, Trump upstaged the other candidates during the first Fox #GOP Debate. Right out of the box, he was the only candidate to say he wouldn't promise not to run as an Independent if he didn't get the nomination. When pressed on the issue, he kept restating that even if they rejected him, he would still cause trouble by running as a third party candidate.
He also kept his hard-line stance on the border wall with Mexico:
Pushed by hostess Megyn Kelly to explain why he attacks women, Trump said he wished he could say a few things to her, and it was clear to see the bully-boy come out.
The rest of the primary candidates spent time trying to dig themselves out of old holes caused by old statements, or they tried to climb over Trump to get their message out.
Ben Carson mumbled about taxes based on Biblical Tithing, just sounding silly. Huckabee mentioned Benghazi at least once. Scott Walker got in a zinger at Hillary Clinton's emails, but also sounded Mitt-like by talking about war with bayonets. Jeb Bush just looked tired and clueless, while Marco Rubio sounded well-rehearsed but also anti-immigration so why would Latinos vote for him?
Chris Christie attempted to play up his involvement with Homeland Security during 9-11 when he was Attorney General of New Jersey prosecuting terrorists. But in most viewer's minds, it just begs the question of why he would then turn around and close down a bridge just for petty politics?
Ted Cruz ran against Washington, giving a mini-speech about cancelling everything about Obama on "Day One" of his Presidency (which will never happen). Cruz was also unintentionally funny, saying his Dad was once a drug addict before he found Jesus. And now . . . his Daddy is a religion addict-fanatic.
All of them want more War, and less Planned Parenthood.
The only Republican that came off sounding moderate was Governor John Kasich, but his message of love, acceptance and help is so far removed from the core of the Tea Party that he is dead in the water now. However, they might drag him along as Veep just to try and win the Ohio swing-state vote.
OMG - there will be two hours of debate on Fox News Thursday night, from 9-11 p.m. with Trump and nine Non-Trumps, plus an earlier hour of debate from 5-6 pm of the also-rans who didn't make the cut.
So get your popcorn, a iPad or phone for tweeting, and some alcohol for a drinking game. It doesn't get any better than this!
In naming the debate field, Fox News said Trump led its poll aggregation with 23.4%, followed by Bush at 12% and Walker at 10.2%.
The remainder of the top ten: Huckabee (6.6%), Carson (5.8%), Cruz (5.4%), Rubio (5.4%), Paul (4.8%), Christie (3.4%) and Kasich (3.2%).
The percentages for the other candidates: Perry (1.8%), Santorum (1.4%), Jindal (1.4%), Fiorina (1.3%), Graham (0.7%), Pataki (0.6%) and Gilmore (0.2%).
Except for Trump, the Polls Look Rather Limp-O-Tent
Rachel Maddow pointed out that Fox broke their own rules to bump Perry from the main debate but allow in John Kasich, Governor of Ohio, who just entered the race last week. Where is the debate being held? Cleveland, Ohio. Coincidence. Absolutely not.
“This is nuts,” she said. “I can’t believe they did this. I mean, I get that Fox News only wants to have 10 candidates on the stage. They know, and everybody knows, that arbitrarily setting this 10-candidate cutoff when you’ve got 17 people running is gonna have politically-fatal consequences for if not all, at least most of the candidates who don’t make that top 10.”
Maddow explained that Fox originally said it would use the five most recent polls to determine which candidates would make it into Thursday’s debate. However, the network ended up ignoring an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted between July 26 and 30 showing Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Ohio Gov. John Kasich within one percentage point of each other and instead used a Quinnipiac University poll gathered between July 23 and 28 showing Kasich ahead by three percentage points.
“That decision had the effect of making John Kasich look like he is way more clearly ahead of Rick Perry than he would look otherwise,” she said. . . . “They violated their own previously-announced criteria of what polls they use,” she said. “They moved the goal posts in the middle of the game in a way that makes it look like they were trying to justify the lineup of who they wanted on stage.”
"Today after two years of negotiation the United States together with the international community has achieved something that decades of animosity has not: a comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon," Obama said from the White House, with Vice President Joe Biden at his side.
"This deal is not built on trust. It's built on verification," Obama said Tuesday.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also praised the deal, speaking after Obama finished, as televisions in Iran broadcast the U.S. President's statement live, translated into Farsi.
"Negotiators have reached a good agreement and I announce to our people that our prayers have come true," Rouhani said in a live address to the nation following Obama. The essential idea behind the deal is that in exchange for limits on its nuclear activities, Iran would get relief from sanctions while being allowed to continue its atomic program for peaceful purposes.
Complete Iran Deal Press Conference with President Obama 1-15-2015
ABC's Jon Karl, well-known GOP tool, tried to make it political and ask about Donald Trump, and Obama waved him off:
CBS News reporter Major Garrett tried to start a Benghazi-like controversy by asking whether the President even cared about hostages in Iran and he got a smackdown from the President.
"The notion that I'm 'content' as I celebrate, with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails? Major, that's nonsense. And you should know better."
~ President Obama
Turns out, both Karl and Garret may have been asking about hostages because Trump brought the issue up on MSNBC's Morning Joe. He also said the President and John Kerry should have read his book, "The Art of the Deal."
Well, they didn't read The Art of the Deal. Most people did, they didn't. It's a ridiculous deal. Even a thing like, you know, nuclear's so important and stopping nuclear proliferation, which just as likely will enhance, but so important.
But something like at the beginning when they were discussing it, we had three prisoners, we now have four prisoners.
Automatically you say, listen, not going to do you any good, release the prisoners would send a great signal to everybody. You don't care about them, but we do, important for the United States. Just release the prisoners. Now, if that's deliver by the right messenger, they would have done it a long time ago. Amazingly, they -- I don't think that Kerry brought it up.
That GOP champion, Benjamin Netanyahu,is not a happy camper with the President either:
PM Netanyahu: "The world is a much more dangerous place today than it was yesterday." https://t.co/nfXmEam0A7
