We don’t know whether Donald Trump’s dismissal of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski followed the script of his old reality TV show The Apprentice. We don’t know whether Trump uttered the show’s famous punchline: “You’re fired!” But we do know Lewandowski was escorted out of the building after he was fired and that Lewandowski said he […]
Donald Trump
Posted inPolitics, The Download
A Trumped-up convention
So how, in a year in which there is no statewide election, with a Republican governor sailing along with near-historic approval ratings, does a Massachusetts Democratic convention get attention? Trump. Trumptrumptrumptrump. Trumpdedump. Donald Trump. Eschewing attacks on Gov. Charlie Baker and with a fairly anemic Republican delegation in the Legislature that presents no bogeyman to […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Voters trump media predictions
There’s nothing those in the media like reading and writing more than “we got it wrong” stories, provided they have company. And in the case of Donald Trump, there are plenty of people on the mea culpa highway. Trump has been dallying around the fringes of presidential politics for a few years now, first hobnobbing […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Man vs Woman
Well, there’s no more skirting around about how the presidential election will play out between now and November. “She is a woman. She is playing the woman card left and right,” said the GOP’s self-proclaimed presumptive nominee Donald Trump about his presumptive November opponent, Hillary Clinton. “She didn’t play it last time with [then-senator Barack] Obama. But […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
Is the media to blame for Trump?
It’s become almost accepted wisdom that the news media have fanned the flame of Donald Trump, basking in his click-bait commentary and covering his every move as if he was a form of entertainment and not a candidate for president. President Obama said as much earlier this week. But Zeynep Tufekci, who studies social media […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Warren’s end game
In a series of tweets and Facebook posts, US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday pounded away at GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. Borrowing a page from Trump’s rhetorical playbook, Warren called the Republican frontrunner a loser, a cheat, a bully, and a bad businessman. “But just because Trump is a loser everywhere else doesn’t mean […]
Posted inHealth Care, Opinion
Trump’s health plan folly
ON MARCH 14, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan federal budget watchdog group, released an economic analysis of the recent health proposals made by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Their key findings: “Donald Trump’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare would cost nearly $500 billion over a decade, or $270 billion […]
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For the record, Trump is a little off-base
Word leaked out several days ago a recent meeting Donald Trump held with the New York Times editorial board included assertions by the bombastic billionaire that what he’s saying on the campaign trail about illegal immigrants may not be the same as what he’d do if elected. Trump’s opponents, especially Sen.Ted Cruz, jumped all over that, calling […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
The GOP’s no-win proposition
Barney Frank once shared this bit of wisdom with a would-be candidate for a seat on the Boston City Council: You could lose or, even worse, you might win. For mainstream Republicans, a variation on that now seems to be at play in the presidential race. They can’t quite make up their minds about whether […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Clinton v. Trump: What they said and how they said it
Someone tuning in Tuesday night to the nation’s presidential race saw two frontrunners on television who couldn’t have been more different stylistically and politically. Hillary Clinton hosted a traditional campaign victory celebration in Miami, with a cheering crowd and a carefully crafted speech that touched on broad themes and repeatedly took direct aim at Donald […]