Seth Meyers looks back at how Trump won
Just after I wrote that Donald Trump, now that he has sewn up the Republican nomination, may think it prudent to quietly forget his earlier promise to provide a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, he has once again promised to release such a list.
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The website Talking Points Memo (TPM) is doing a public service by keeping a scorecard of where elected Republicans stand vis a vis Donald Trump. They have split them up into five categories 1) Endorse, 2) “Supporting the Nominee”, 3) Mum’s the Word, 4) Fuzzball and 5) NeverTrump and are tracking their movements across categories. You can see the definitions of those terms here.
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Conan O’Brien takes a moment to pay tribute to all 16 Republican candidates who fell under the Trump juggernaut. He gives us the date when they decided to call it quits as well as the reason for doing so. It is interesting that five of them (Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki) dropped out even before the first actual contest, the Iowa caucuses, took place on February 1. Carl Bialik gives the full chronology of when each entered and left the race.
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Donald Trump has announced that Ben Carson will be part of the team entrusted with the task of vetting his potential running mates. Carson has himself said that he is open to being Trump’s vice-presidential choice so this brings up an interesting historical episode.
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Yesterday, just one day after Ted Cruz announced that he was quitting the race, John Kasich announced that he too was giving up on his campaign for Republican nomination, with a farewell speech containing the usual references to god’s will for him.
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Barack Obama came into office promising to end the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and close the Guantanamo torture camp and none of those things have happened. In fact we are now involved in new wars in Syria and Libya, not to mention Yemen. But there is at least the theoretical possibility that after a president is voted out of office after four or eight years, any bad policies they instituted can be reversed by their successor, though in practice such reversals are not so easy since Congress is also involved.
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The video below was taken by Pearl Love when she was treated rudely by a woman seated across from her on a subway (language advisory). Love is a trans woman who immigrated to the US from Taiwan in 1998 and no longer has any contact with her family because of her gender change.
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Yesterday’s primary results in Indiana produced two unexpected results. First off was the surprise win by Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton by five points (52.5% to 47.5%) when the pre-election poll average had Clinton leading by close to 7 points. The relentless media coverage that it was all over for Sanders and that it was time for him to bow out would normally result in a snowball effect where people start drifting to the presumed leader and supporters of the trailing candidate do not bother to vote. That this did not happen and that there was a 12-point difference between polls and the final outcome suggests that many voters still cannot reconcile themselves to the policies Clinton represents and are determined to have their voice heard.
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If you thought that the presidential race in the US was ugly, you should see the race for mayor of London that will be voted on May 5. Robert Mackey brings us up-to-date on the campaign pitting the Labour Party candidate and human rights lawyer Sadiq Kahn and the Conservative Party’s Zac Goldsmith.
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