I don't know how serious he is about running. Or whether he is just trying to raise issues not previously discussed, and force others to address them.

...or just trying to raise his own national profile in advance of another TV or book deal.

My only hope for America right now is that those polls are the results of Democrats sabotaging the outright ridiculous debate rules set up by the RNC, FoxNews, and the like. Because--you know--they want that man and his special blend of crazy on the stage.

Another conservative in a conversation with me yesterday speculated that Trump (as you say, a friend of Hillary, and a longtime DNC campaign donor who has previously and recently endorsed many liberal issues) is deliberately sabotaging the GOP primary field, to secure the election for Hillary Clinton.

I wish that were true. But if you go over to a site like free Republic, they're falling all over themselves calling Trump the real conservative in the race and everybody else in the race (including, sometimes, Cruz) a RINO.

Yes. You read that correctly. They're decrying RINOs while throwing their support to a Clinton pal who donated thousands to the DNC, supported Kelo and single payer healthcare and, until relatively recently, was actually a registered Democrat.

It's truly bizarre.

4 times divorced and bankrupted guy vs the gal who still has the same husband and has a charity that helps lots of poor people. I understand the usual throwing of shit by your side but Trump isn't the republican frontrunner because he's seen as less sleazy than say Jeb Bush, Rubio or Hillary.

Yesterday a small Puerto Rican news site published a story in which Donald Trump is reported to have told a group of potential donors that, if elected president, he would revoke the U.S. citizenship of anyone born in Puerto Rico.

“
Donald Trump eliminara la ciudadanía americana a los puertorriqueños de ser presidente – http://t.co/0IQTgjv9u1 pic.twitter.com/abJQTVDGEZ

— NoticiasPRTV (@Noticias_PRTV) August 21, 2015



The story was quickly shared by another Puerto Rican site.

“
¿Qué opinas? Alegan Donald Trump quiere quitarle la ciudadanía americana a los puertorriqueños http://t.co/XYWClFd2Kl pic.twitter.com/uEj7IB73dv

— Tu Noticia PR (@TuNoticiaPR) August 21, 2015



Neither article quotes Trump directly, and the second article mentions “South American news media” without providing a link or naming which outlets in particular.

Unable to find other reports to corroborate the story, we decided not to run it.

“
POORLY REPORTED story from @Noticias_PRTV alleging Trump would remove US citizenship from PRicans. Not buying it. https://t.co/DrmyAgc7er

— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) August 21, 2015



We awoke this morning to find that Trump’s alleged statement has been picked up by other sites, even appearing in a Univision forum.

Now, it could be that Trump did actually say what he’s rumored to have said, but without at least a single confirmed source to back up the story, it’s merely rumor. Whether fact or fiction, the story is bad journalism, and bad journalism leads to the spread of bad information.

Plus, given the spotlight on Trump’s campaign at the moment, if this story were true, it would’ve been picked up by plenty of other news outlets. Puerto Ricans are peeved when they’re described as drug dealers, so a presidential candidate promising to revoke their citizenship would be major news—if the story were true.

With a ton of rumors and allegations presented as facts, people are fired up for the wrong reasons. The truth is you don’t have to put words in Trump’s mouth in order to outrage the public, because Trump already says outrageous stuff all by himself.

Then there’s the New York Times story in which a Trump supporter is quoted as saying:

“Hopefully, he’s going to sit there and say, ‘When I become elected president, what we’re going to do is we’re going to make the border a vacation spot, it’s going to cost you $25 for a permit, and then you get $50 for every confirmed kill.’

A Trump supporter actually said that, and we can be relatively certain of it because it’s quoted directly by a proven news outlet—either whose reputation will be ruined or whose revenue would take a hit if it were discovered that they printed bad information. This is how critical readers try to discern the truth from lies.

Unfortunately, with 2016 fast approaching, we can expect more hearsay and outright lies passed along as news. People will be looking to spur hatred against the party they disagree with, so we haven’t seen the last of these trumped-up stories.

4 times divorced ...

It's funny that you bring up character as an issue and than think it's funny that it only applies to one candidate.

"vs. the gal who still has the same husband", a husband who has fucked every girl besides Hillary who he could get his hands on, including a few he has arguably raped, or at least abused his governer and presidential position to inappropriately sexually harass.
"The same husband", who Hillary Clinton stood by only for politically expedient reasons, to advance her own political ambitions. Even TIME magazine reported during Bill Clinton's presidency the heat of their exchanges before White House staffers, a hostility so deep that they slept in separate bedrooms. And that Hillary is a lesbian who regularly carpet munches on Houma Abedin (who by the way is still married to that tower of virtue and marital fidelity, Anthony Weiner).
Yeah, what a gleaming traditional marriage they have.

And yet Hillary Clinton defended her rapist/sexual-harasser husband and led the campaign to defame and destroy the women who reluctantly came forward. The women that Hillary Clinton herself knew to be simply telling the truth. Hillary Clinton's war on women!

"and has a charity that helps lots of poor people."
It's well established that the Clinton Foundation traded multi-million dollar donations with some of the most brutal regimes on earth, that are rife with political suppression and abuse of women. And well known for pay-to-play political corruption. Nations whose "charitable" donations buy influence and silence of a potential U.S. president, if Hillary Clinton were (increasingly improbably) to even get the nomination and be elected in 2016.

Your support of Hillary Clinton at this point just manifests your capacity to support corruption and outright evil, if you feel it will advance your liberal cause, by any means available, and by corruption and slander as a first and last resort.

If your unwavering support of Obama's demagogic race and class dividing debt-spiking treasonous cultural Marxist presidency didn't prove that already.

Oh god, we're not really going to be treating this as a credible book teeming with veracity are we?

... the shitbags he is cashing in on trying to bury.

...bullshit... shitty....so I'm sure Hillary sends her fucking regards.

Worse yet he weakens this country with his talk about rigged polls and elections...That is not anybody you would really want as the most powerful office in the world.

Then I guess it's a damn good thing that Al Gore lost.

Nixon may have behaved himself for that election but the republican party very much bitterly contested it with recounts. Nixon could afford to be above it all.

] Gore on the other hand won the popular vote and didn't go as far as the republican party did with Nixon. Gore also gave a very nice concession speech when it was time.

Anybody see Trump even coming close to having that type of character?

I would also point out that many of your posts consists of you "relentlessly attacking" democrats.

I know you have strong feelings but that doesn't make Trump a good person. No, he's somebody that has so little character that he's already saying if he doesn't win he'll go down crying it was rigged.

Many people believed that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud, especially in Texas, where Kennedy's running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was senator, and Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley's powerful Chicago political machine.[42] These two states were important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have earned 270 electoral votes, one more than the 269 needed to win the majority in the Electoral College and the presidency. Republican Senators such as Everett Dirksen and Barry Goldwater also believed that vote fraud played a role in the election,[41] and they believed that Nixon actually won the national popular vote. Republicans tried and failed to overturn the results in both Illinois and Texas at the time—as well as in nine other states.[47] Some journalists also later claimed that mobster Sam Giancana and his Chicago crime syndicate played a role in Kennedy's victory in Illinois.[47]

Nixon's campaign staff urged him to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of Kennedy's victory in several states, especially in Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election.[41] However, Nixon gave a speech three days after the election stating that he would not contest the election.[41] The Republican National Chairman, Senator Thruston Ballard Morton of Kentucky, visited Key Biscayne, Florida, where Nixon had taken his family for a vacation, and pushed for a recount.[41] Morton did challenge the results in 11 states,[42] keeping challenges in the courts into the summer of 1961. However, the only result of these challenges was the loss of Hawaii to Kennedy on a recount.

Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes out of 4.75 million cast, or a margin of 0.2%.[42] However, Nixon carried 92 of the state's 101 counties, and Kennedy's victory in Illinois came from the city of Chicago, where Mayor Richard J. Daley held back much of Chicago's vote until the late morning hours of November 9. The efforts of Daley and the powerful Chicago Democratic organization gave Kennedy an extraordinary Cook County victory margin of 450,000 votes—more than 10% of Chicago's 1960 population of 3.55 million,[48] although Cook County also includes many suburbs outside of Chicago's borders—thus barely overcoming the heavy Republican vote in the rest of Illinois. Earl Mazo, a reporter for the pro-Nixon New York Herald Tribune, investigated the voting in Chicago and claimed to have discovered sufficient evidence of vote fraud to prove that the state was stolen for Kennedy.[42]

In Texas, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a narrow 51% to 49% margin, or 46,000 votes.[42] Some Republicans argued that Johnson's formidable political machine had stolen enough votes in counties along the Mexican border to give Kennedy the victory. Kennedy's defenders, such as his speechwriter and special assistant Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., have argued that Kennedy's margin in Texas (46,000 votes) was simply too large for vote fraud to have been a decisive factor. Russell D. Renka, a former political science professor at Southeastern Missouri State University,[49] acknowledged that it was more than likely that Johnson's political machine in the state's lower Rio Grande Valley counties, including the notorious Duval County, could have managed to produce a significant number of forged votes for Kennedy.[50] However, Renka also acknowledged that Kennedy's margin in the state's initial tally made it far too difficult to prove that voter fraud had determined who won Texas and that any recount would also have been hard to conduct.[50]

Cases of voter fraud were discovered in Texas. For example, Fannin County had only 4,895 registered voters, yet 6,138 votes were cast in that county, three-quarters for Kennedy.[41] In an Angelina County precinct, Kennedy received 187 votes to Nixon's 24, though there were only a total of 86 registered voters in the precinct.[41] When Republicans demanded a statewide recount, they learned that the state Board of Elections, whose members were all Democrats, had already certified Kennedy as the official winner in Texas.[41]

In Illinois, Schlesinger and others have pointed out that, even if Nixon had carried Illinois, the state alone would not have given him the victory, as Kennedy would still have won 276 electoral votes to Nixon's 246 (with 269 needed to win). More to the point, Illinois was the site of the most extensive challenge process, which fell short despite repeated efforts spearheaded by Cook County state's attorney, Benjamin Adamowski, a Republican, who also lost his re-election bid. Despite demonstrating net errors favoring both Nixon and Adamowski (some precincts—40% in Nixon's case—showed errors favoring them, a factor suggesting error, rather than fraud), the totals found fell short of reversing the results for either candidate. While a Daley-connected circuit judge, Thomas Kluczynski (who would later be appointed a federal judge by Kennedy, at Daley's recommendation), threw out a federal lawsuit filed to contend the voting totals,[41] the Republican-dominated State Board of Elections unanimously rejected the challenge to the results. Furthermore, there were signs of possible irregularities in downstate areas controlled by Republicans, which Democrats never seriously pressed, since the Republican challenges went nowhere.[51] More than a month after the election, the Republican National Committee abandoned its Illinois voter fraud claims.[42]

However, a special prosecutor assigned to the case brought charges against 650 people, which did not result in convictions.[41] Three Chicago election workers were convicted of voter fraud in 1962 and served short terms in jail.[41] Mazo, the Herald-Tribune reporter, later said that he found names of the dead who had voted in Chicago, along with 56 people from one house.[41] He found cases of Republican voter fraud in southern Illinois, but said that the totals did not match the Chicago fraud he found.[41] After Mazo had published four parts of an intended 12-part voter fraud series documenting his findings which was re-published nationally, he says Nixon requested his publisher stop the rest of the series so as to prevent a constitutional crisis.[41] Nevertheless, the Chicago Tribune (which routinely endorsed GOP presidential candidates, including Nixon in 1960, 1968 and 1972) wrote that "the election of November 8 was characterized by such gross and palpable fraud as to justify the conclusion that [Nixon] was deprived of victory."[41] Had Nixon won both states, he would have ended up with exactly 270 electoral votes and the presidency, with or without a victory in the popular vote.