They certainly do like it when he incites violence at his political rallies.

They are all in for him. If you already support Trump nothing, absolutely nothing, will make you waver.

The goal is to put a lid on his support.

They even admit he is not a republican, but do they care about anything but themselves? Trump reflects their sadistic traits right back at them. He is the perfect candidate to represent the Plutocracy party.

He will attract mean spirited people, still he would have to double his voter base to match HRC...so I still say he has no chance in hell.

Muslims so far? Swallowing their disappointment to manufacture justification for their leader's decisions? It's all a Hillary plot?

I have trust issues.

I would really like to see a united front against Trump, similar to the united front in France between center-right and center-left parties, that was formed against Marine Le Pen's National Front party in the recent French regional elections.

Will the Republicans now stop the pearl clutching about any little transgression, mostly sexual, on the part of elected officials from POTUS on down? Elected Democratic men are often caught out womanizing. Elected Republican men, holier than thou, have been caught out doing the same, but sometimes also drifting into more perverted areas. (perverted especially in their public preaching). With Donald Trump, whose "transgressions" are already public record, with many more undisputed stories still bound to come, could American voters now get off their moral high horse and pay a little more attention. Will they ever learn that those who are obsessed and uptight about sex are NOT the normal ones? If Trump were to be elected, God forbid, how could any Republicans ever again sling mud at Democratic (sexual) morals ? If that side of American politics, laughable to most of the rest of the western world, would just go away, Trump would have served a purpose (then again, too easy to be hoped for).

Will the Republicans now stop the pearl clutching about any little transgression, mostly sexual, on the part of elected officials from POTUS on down? Elected Democratic men are often caught out womanizing. Elected Republican men, holier than thou, have been caught out doing the same, but sometimes also drifting into more perverted areas. (perverted especially in their public preaching). With Donald Trump, whose "transgressions" are already public record, with many more undisputed stories still bound to come, could American voters now get off their moral high horse and pay a little more attention. Will they ever learn that those who are obsessed and uptight about sex are NOT the normal ones? If Trump were to be elected, God forbid, how could any Republicans ever again sling mud at Democratic (sexual) morals ? If that side of American politics, laughable to most of the rest of the western world, would just go away, Trump would have served a purpose (then again, too easy to be hoped for).

foreign policy are minor.

We now need a guy who has the best words, best walls, and is bigly smart.

Folks regardless of their political ideology are risk adverse. That's what all the data shows. Trump will be too risky a bet to many.

So yeah, he's not growing his base.

is the latest version. I don't think he ever intended to get the nomination, and he's frightened out of his mind that he might not lose in November. Relax Donald, Hillary is going to win.

Technically correct. I just thought my header was funny.

I truly think Trump did this for shits and giggles and to show what phonies Republicans are. He's in pretty deep.

orders and do the thinking. That is probably what he told the Republicans in their meeting.

The presidency would be far too constricting for Trump, and he knows it. The question is whether he throws the race before the convention, making it easier to replace him, or after the convention, making it difficult, but not impossible.

I think he has enjoyed the attention from the beginning and spent the past few months loving the trolling he has been giving the gop. He'd probably be perfectly happy to see his friends the Clintons back in the White House. Bill did appoint his sister to Federal District Court, even though she is a republican, and apparently a competent judge.

We shall see. Each voter shall vote his or her conscience in the primaries and in the general, and we get a new president.

and his supporters won't let him. Some of the stuff he's said would have ended the campaign of almost anyone else alive.

If he wanted out it would be easy enough.

The ironic thing is it would make the people who endorsed him look like fools.

I've thought from the beginning that it was a publicity stunt, but I will admit that I've had my doubts lately and they've grown as time's passed. I'm kind of in shock that we're even still talking about him at this point.

Some of the crazier stuff he's said just seemed too calculated to cause outrage, almost as though he was trying to find a way out without explicitly calling it a day. He's basically offended everyone, but it just made him more popular with the nuts.

If it's all an act, making the party and those who've endorsed him look foolish could have been intentional. As others have said, though, I'm not sure his ego would let him crash-and-burn, even if it meant taking the party out with him.

He ran simply because he could. It was a big ego boost and a big marketing exercise for getting his name more out there. He wanted to run with it as long as he could. I think even he was surprised that it took off. Then again look at his competition.

It got to a point that he realized people hated the other choices (and in his mind lurved him) so much that he actually had a shot. And that only blew his head up even more. The epitome of that moment IMO was when he declared that he could shoot someone and still have his support...and the crowd cheered.

Outside of Kasich, who only looked reasonable in the context of the rest of the nuts, there weren't any acceptable options, much less good ones. Trump probably couldn't have picked a better time to run. Or worse, depending on the perspective.

Re: the shoot someone comment - agreed. He says stuff that people joke about in private, which seems to be part of the appeal. More like appalled.

Those voters will find it difficult to support trippin trump

still-partially-sane voters he'll need to win.

The stakes are too high for us to take it for granted, so we need to make the most of each item that displays Trump's lack of character.

The obvious lying about his own creepy fake calls, is something they can grasp as purely self serving and weird for Trump, and the timing with this taxes issue probably makes them also pay a little more attention to his clear discomfort with releasing his taxes.

This is not a good week for the trust between Trump and his most loyal fans, and I also sense a shift in the media coverage of him.

My perception is that this is the beginning of the media screws tightening.

They probably think him impersonating himself was funny and his taxes are his own business.

I hope you're correct though.

That would pretty much fit the pattern.

Trump made a big error by not laughing this off, this is a real crack in his tough man facade to his believers, it isn't a deal breaker of course, but his true believers will find it a little sobering.

This makes it harder for them to ignore his clear discomfort with releasing his taxes and his casual changing of his positions that they thought he was firm on, because now they see that he will lie hard and double down on it, just to avoid personal embarrassment and purely for his ego.

This makes him look brittle, it is weakness, the first hint that Trump can be easily rattled with the personal.

You may be right, but I don't see much of anything changing their minds. He's lied almost continuously since his campaign began, and they just get more entrenched.

The tax thing will probably make him more popular with them, not less. He's just "fighting the establishment", after all.

I'm just not sure any lie would be enough to dissuade a lot of his supporters.

The general electorate? Definitely, though a lot of them already knew he was a fraud.

caught up in his image and personality.

The lying to promote himself they could dismiss, to them that is "good business" which is their answer to most everything that is related to Trump, including lying and it was also "a long time ago" in their language, although he was in his mid 40s, but since he is denying it like a pansy and seems shaken a little, they are forced to see it all in a different light.

Everything about this screams personal weakness in the inner Trump, this time the lying doesn't seem bold, or dismissive of him, this time the lying looks desperate and real, and all about his insecurity and embarrassment, it just seems to me that this one is different and that his reaction is different, and that this one is the lie and the reaction, that his devotees can see and grasp.

I think this plants a seed of credibility doubt in them, which means that all of this weeks bad news carries a tiny fraction of more image damage, than without this John Miller story.

Trump does not look confident dealing with and lying about this story, and THAT, is a big deal.

Inspite of his effort to lose. His fans are haters.

I peg his chances at 30%. Given what a horrible person he is even those odds should scare the bejesus out of people.

If any groups stop Trump it will be people of color and women.

Arguing with facts never works with folks who've already made their minds-up. Ridicule on the other hand makes people question their support as folks generally don't want to be associated with backing a fool. The liberal side of the spectrum by its very nature is loathe to heap ridicule upon a clown, and would much rather resort to logic where logic cannot prevail.

The reason why so many people like the Donald, is simply because all these crazy things he says keep pissing off the liberals. And pissing off liberals feels so good to so many. The more faux outrage elicited by MSNBC or CNN the better. The Trumpsters love the fact that they have a candidate who makes liberals have hissy fits. It's a visceral values thing - not something based on reason.

If the Democrats would concentrate on making a fool of Trump (but, and this is the most important part, not his followers) they could take the air out of the orange haired balloon masquerading as a serious candidate. Sadly, I doubt the Democrats are capable of this shift.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions - Thomas Jefferson.

The true believers will NOT be swayed. Trump, as he suggested, could walk out onto 5th avenue, shoot somebody and not get convicted. I believe this - not the being convicted part but his popularity would be stable (net loss/gain of +/- 3%). We are trying to appeal to the part of the electorate with a moderate degree of cognitive dissonance. Cheers.

...who blindly follow their leader and think he can do no wrong. Hillary supporters fit under that, too, they will follow her no matter how much she flip-flops.

But it's people like his supporters (and the rest of us) who'll get screwed by the upper 1% (again).

Jeremy Scahill, on Real Time last night, said we should take notice that there is a very real fascist element in the U.S. and the orange fella is empowering them to come out of the sewers. Camus' The Plague comes to mind. We are teetering on madness and collapse. As Nate Silver said on the Daily Show, I may move to somewhere like Bellingham Washington - one foot poised to Canada. I, for one, will stay and fight - IF it comes to that. I will not run from this fascist, racist excrement. I hope I could take out 5, no....10 before I am taken out. However, my mustard seed of optimism tells me these folks will begin dying of natural causes within the next 5-10 years so let's continue to out shout them, denigrate their ideas as NOT human and mock them without ceasing until this perverted way of thinking is on par with Polio.

Cheers everyone!

What "it" actually "is" is the crazy part.

I'll #rump, like the "gimp" until he cries uncle. Come on Quentin give me a little cover.

how any adult (I guess I'm misplaced in assuming adult means mature) could possibly want a buffoon like this to be the leader of this nation.

Not even a pretense of respectability.

Just blows my mind.

Drumpf ain't that far from lil' Bush. In fact they have much in common; as in a lack of understanding, questionable cognitive skills and an aversion to nuance. But, and this is important, they seem forthright and full of resolve and the fact that they piss off the liberal democratic base is a huuuge plus.

So I'm a bit surprised at all the gnashing of teeth over the Donald, having watched much of this country willingly line up behind Bush. You know, the kind of guy I'd like to "have a beer with".

Both project a sense of unwavering leadership with a willingness to "fight". Machiavelli would love both of these guys.

He's gets the corporate media to push his image non-stop for free for a year and look what we have today.

is the that they believe him to be the Working Man's Candidate and savior
He who has never wanted for anything
He who has never worked a day in life
He who has screwed over over so many workers on his projects
He was setup in Biz with a few Million from his papa
He who keeps his money off shore so as not to pay taxes

Working Man Candidate my ass!