Exclusive — Trump Basks in Frontrunner Status: ‘I’m Honored’ by Polling Leads, ‘Party Is Very Unified’ Behind 2024 Campaign

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana — Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday night that he is “honored” to be the frontrunner for the White House in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump, just off his arraignment post-indictment in New York City, has seen a massive surge of support both in the GOP primary and in general election numbers in recent weeks.

“Well, I’m honored,” Trump said when asked why he thinks he is seeing the surge to frontrunner status. “Sadly, I have to say part of it is because the country is doing so poorly. I wish it were for other reasons. They saw how we did, and now they see the country doing so poorly and so pathetically. We’re not respected by anybody. You have wars all over. Ukraine and Russia never would have happened if I were president — zero chance. It looks like China is going to happen with Taiwan. That never would have happened. And inflation never would have happened. It was caused by energy prices more than anything else. So many of these things were just self-imposed foolish mistakes — stupid mistakes beyond anything anyone has ever seen before. So, yeah, I’m leading a lot in the polls — by 35 or 40 points in almost every poll. Texas just came in and we’re almost 50 points in Texas. Now, Massachusetts is almost 50 points.”

It seems like the indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and the intense national focus on his arraignment, has only fueled Trump’s surge.

In general election numbers, two post-indictment YouGov surveys nationally put Trump ahead of Democrat President Joe Biden, and a Rasmussen Reports survey showed Trump expanding his lead to seven percent over the incumbent president.

Trump’s surge in the GOP primary has been even more profound. Every state polled since the indictment has shown Trump leading everyone else, and in most places, he has double-digit leads and majority support in both head-to-head matchups and in crowded fields.

In Iowa, for instance, Trump leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 30 percent in the latest survey conducted by Victory Insights from April 10 to April 13. The poll of 400 likely 2024 Iowa caucus participants found Trump at 54 percent and DeSantis languishing down at 24 percent. Former United States ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was at 14 percent, and everyone else was in single digits.

In New Hampshire, in the latest survey from Saint Anselm College, Trump leads DeSantis by 13 percent. That poll, taken March 28 to March 30, has Trump at 42 percent, DeSantis at 29 percent, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu at 14 percent, and everyone else in single digits.

In Georgia, Trump leads DeSantis by 21 percent according to the latest University of Georgia survey of 983 likely voters conducted from April 2 to April 12. That poll has Trump in majority territory in Georgia at 51 percent, while DeSantis is down at 30 percent.

Reacting to the Georgia poll, Trump told Breitbart News that he is not surprised.

“I’ve always said that Georgia is a red state,” Trump said. “Georgia is not a purple state or a blue state. Georgia is a red state. It’s red, red, red.”

Trump leads by even more in Kentucky, where Trump — at 62 percent — towers over DeSantis’s 23 percent by a whopping 39 points. That survey, conducted by Emerson College from April 10 to April 11, surveyed 900 likely voters in Kentucky.

Trump has shown similar dominant leads in Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, and even Florida — the state that just reelected DeSantis governor and where Trump also resides permanently at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

National surveys of the Republican primary show a similar trend whereby Trump has emerged as perhaps the strongest GOP frontrunner in modern memory with well into double-digit leads over anyone else.

Trump is basking in his status as the clear GOP frontrunner for the White House and is racking up key endorsements to lock in unified GOP support for his campaign. Hours before this interview which came immediately after his speech to the annual National Rifle Association (NRA) gathering, Trump won the endorsement of freshman Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC).

From here, Trump flew to Nashville, Tennessee, where he delivered the keynote address at a Republican National Committee (RNC) gathering — and won the endorsement of Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN).

“It’s moving quickly,” Trump told Breitbart News of the growing number of endorsements and increased party support for his 2024 campaign.

He was also thrilled he won the endorsement of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a move that shocked many political observers given Donalds’s close relationship with DeSantis. “A great endorsement — who was close to DeSanctus,” Trump told Breitbart News, using one of the several pejorative nicknames he developed for the possible intra-party White House rival next year. Donalds endorsing Trump instead of DeSantis was especially big because Donalds and DeSantis have been very close — and their wives are similarly close. DeSantis had even appointed Donalds’ wife Erika to a state board. Donalds even introduced DeSantis at his November 2022 election night victory party, making the endorsement of Trump even more stinging.

Trump told Breitbart News that the recent stream of endorsements — this interview came right after the Budd endorsement and just before the Hagerty endorsement — is a sign the party is unifying quickly behind his 2024 campaign as other actual or possible contenders struggle to find their footing.

“I think so. I think the party is very unified,” Trump said. “I also think they’re looking at the polls now and they’re saying, ‘wow, that’s impressive.’ But we’re leading by so much and they’re seeing that. I think people look back to those four years we had — we had an incredible four years then we got hit by the COVID situation, the gift from China, which was a terrible, terrible thing to have to go through that. But we did a great job with it, rebuilt the economy, gave over a stock market that was higher than it was just pre-COVID — pretty amazing. People look back to the times of especially that first two and a half years prior to the COVID coming — the China virus as I call it because that’s what it was. There’s never been anything like it in the history of our country. We can do that again, and I think we can actually do it even better again.”

More from Trump’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.

Source

Exclusive — Trump Basks in Frontrunner Status: ‘I’m Honored’ by Polling Leads, ‘Party Is Very Unified’ Behind 2024 Campaign

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana — Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday night that he is “honored” to be the frontrunner for the White House in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump, just off his arraignment post-indictment in New York City, has seen a massive surge of support both in the GOP primary and in general election numbers in recent weeks.

“Well, I’m honored,” Trump said when asked why he thinks he is seeing the surge to frontrunner status. “Sadly, I have to say part of it is because the country is doing so poorly. I wish it were for other reasons. They saw how we did, and now they see the country doing so poorly and so pathetically. We’re not respected by anybody. You have wars all over. Ukraine and Russia never would have happened if I were president — zero chance. It looks like China is going to happen with Taiwan. That never would have happened. And inflation never would have happened. It was caused by energy prices more than anything else. So many of these things were just self-imposed foolish mistakes — stupid mistakes beyond anything anyone has ever seen before. So, yeah, I’m leading a lot in the polls — by 35 or 40 points in almost every poll. Texas just came in and we’re almost 50 points in Texas. Now, Massachusetts is almost 50 points.”

It seems like the indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and the intense national focus on his arraignment, has only fueled Trump’s surge.

In general election numbers, two post-indictment YouGov surveys nationally put Trump ahead of Democrat President Joe Biden, and a Rasmussen Reports survey showed Trump expanding his lead to seven percent over the incumbent president.

Trump’s surge in the GOP primary has been even more profound. Every state polled since the indictment has shown Trump leading everyone else, and in most places, he has double-digit leads and majority support in both head-to-head matchups and in crowded fields.

In Iowa, for instance, Trump leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 30 percent in the latest survey conducted by Victory Insights from April 10 to April 13. The poll of 400 likely 2024 Iowa caucus participants found Trump at 54 percent and DeSantis languishing down at 24 percent. Former United States ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was at 14 percent, and everyone else was in single digits.

In New Hampshire, in the latest survey from Saint Anselm College, Trump leads DeSantis by 13 percent. That poll, taken March 28 to March 30, has Trump at 42 percent, DeSantis at 29 percent, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu at 14 percent, and everyone else in single digits.

In Georgia, Trump leads DeSantis by 21 percent according to the latest University of Georgia survey of 983 likely voters conducted from April 2 to April 12. That poll has Trump in majority territory in Georgia at 51 percent, while DeSantis is down at 30 percent.

Reacting to the Georgia poll, Trump told Breitbart News that he is not surprised.

“I’ve always said that Georgia is a red state,” Trump said. “Georgia is not a purple state or a blue state. Georgia is a red state. It’s red, red, red.”

Trump leads by even more in Kentucky, where Trump — at 62 percent — towers over DeSantis’s 23 percent by a whopping 39 points. That survey, conducted by Emerson College from April 10 to April 11, surveyed 900 likely voters in Kentucky.

Trump has shown similar dominant leads in Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, and even Florida — the state that just reelected DeSantis governor and where Trump also resides permanently at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

National surveys of the Republican primary show a similar trend whereby Trump has emerged as perhaps the strongest GOP frontrunner in modern memory with well into double-digit leads over anyone else.

Trump is basking in his status as the clear GOP frontrunner for the White House and is racking up key endorsements to lock in unified GOP support for his campaign. Hours before this interview which came immediately after his speech to the annual National Rifle Association (NRA) gathering, Trump won the endorsement of freshman Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC).

From here, Trump flew to Nashville, Tennessee, where he delivered the keynote address at a Republican National Committee (RNC) gathering — and won the endorsement of Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN).

“It’s moving quickly,” Trump told Breitbart News of the growing number of endorsements and increased party support for his 2024 campaign.

He was also thrilled he won the endorsement of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a move that shocked many political observers given Donalds’s close relationship with DeSantis. “A great endorsement — who was close to DeSanctus,” Trump told Breitbart News, using one of the several pejorative nicknames he developed for the possible intra-party White House rival next year. Donalds endorsing Trump instead of DeSantis was especially big because Donalds and DeSantis have been very close — and their wives are similarly close. DeSantis had even appointed Donalds’ wife Erika to a state board. Donalds even introduced DeSantis at his November 2022 election night victory party, making the endorsement of Trump even more stinging.

Trump told Breitbart News that the recent stream of endorsements — this interview came right after the Budd endorsement and just before the Hagerty endorsement — is a sign the party is unifying quickly behind his 2024 campaign as other actual or possible contenders struggle to find their footing.

“I think so. I think the party is very unified,” Trump said. “I also think they’re looking at the polls now and they’re saying, ‘wow, that’s impressive.’ But we’re leading by so much and they’re seeing that. I think people look back to those four years we had — we had an incredible four years then we got hit by the COVID situation, the gift from China, which was a terrible, terrible thing to have to go through that. But we did a great job with it, rebuilt the economy, gave over a stock market that was higher than it was just pre-COVID — pretty amazing. People look back to the times of especially that first two and a half years prior to the COVID coming — the China virus as I call it because that’s what it was. There’s never been anything like it in the history of our country. We can do that again, and I think we can actually do it even better again.”

More from Trump’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.

Source

Abolishing Tenure Will Undermine Red-State Efforts To Reform Higher Education  

Applicants for faculty positions are often required to submit “diversity” statements, which screen out otherwise highly qualified candidates who do not fully endorse wokeness or do not understand its subtleties. In some disciplines, wokeness has corrupted faculty research and teaching.  

Academic journal editors often suppress rigorous studies whose results contradict the tenants of wokeness while promoting shoddy research whose results happen to support wokeness. These poorly conducted studies are easy to publish and even enshrined as conventional wisdom in textbooks. 

Thankfully, red states are starting to fight back against wokeness. Bills are being proposed to defund discriminatory and divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracies, where woke initiatives typically originate. Other bills seek to prevent administrators from subjecting students and faculty to tests of fealty to wokeness and to prohibit race preferences in admissions and hiring. Still others would create new academic units controlled by faculty dissenters from wokeness, which could become havens for non-ideological scholarship. 

Such reforms could be a boon to red-state public universities. If implemented well, they would help red-state universities attract top scholars who find the “woke” academic culture stifling. 

Unfortunately, some red states are pairing anti-woke legislation with bills that weaken or abolish tenure protection, which, if passed, would undermine all reform efforts.

Without tenure, no rational conservative or centrist professor who dissents from wokeness would accept a job at these states’ public universities. Those already there will leave, or woke administrators will purge them in short order.  

As I have pointed out elsewhere, administrators, not faculty members, caused the woke takeover of our universities. Administrators, even in red states, are significantly to the left of faculty, and the faculty does not appoint them.  

Governor-nominated state officials with titles such as regents, trustees, and chancellors appointed the administrators. And legislatures, which Republicans dominate in red states, confirmed them. 

Given the terrible track record of Republican-appointed university officials, it is a near certainty that many administrators who caused the woke ascendancy will stay in power, no matter what state legislatures do.  

At my own university, Texas A&M, Chancellor John Sharp serves at the pleasure of a board of regents who were all appointed by Republican governors, including Gov. Greg Abbott, and confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate. Yet Sharp continues to doggedly defend President Katherine Banks, even after she approved a faculty racial diversity program that violates federal law.  

At a recent meeting of a conservative alumni group, I asked Sharp about her role in the illegal program. Sharp went so far as to declare that Banks would be remembered as the best Texas A&M president in history. 

Red-state governors and legislatures likely will not clear out woke administrators, so professors who dissent from wokeness would never come to or stay at a red-state university that abolished tenure — even if all anti-woke bills become law. Without tenure, dissenting professors have virtually no protection from administrators who want to purge them for their opinions.  

Again, taking my own institution as an example, why would any professor who vocally opposes DEI take a job here as an at-will employee, knowing the president once willingly violated federal law in the name of DEI?  

Even if the present crop of administrators leaves, the terrible track record of the political appointees overseeing the nation’s universities does not inspire much confidence in the next group. 

Statesmen are right to be concerned that tenure can be abused, but provisions exist that can minimize this problem.  

At many public universities, tenured faculty are subject to periodic performance reviews by their peers and can be dismissed for persistent poor performance. They can also be fired for good cause, such as unprofessional conduct, failure to perform duties, and professional incompetence. Tools to remove tenured faculty who perform inadequately or inappropriately hijack the classroom for political activism already exist.  

Tenure protects against arbitrary dismissal, which is necessary if Americans want professors who willingly and publicly speak important yet unpopular truths that administrators, and even some politicians, want suppressed. 

Red-state legislators who wish to enhance their public universities face a historic opportunity. By passing anti-woke reforms, they have the potential to create intellectual environments free from the grip of the woke orthodoxy that is stifling academic freedom worldwide. In so doing, they can potentially attract some of the best and brightest academic talent on the planet.  

Tenure abolition, however, undermines these reforms and makes matters worse. 


Adam Kolasinski is the James W. Ashton Associate Professor of Finance and Faculty Senator at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.

Source

The Left Is Dead Wrong About What Homeless People Really Need

In Austin, Texas, in a 24-hour period in March less than a mile apart, a woman was punched several times and sexually assaulted, suffering a split lower jaw and bruises over her body; then a building was burned down, damaging adjacent buildings, causing about $1.5 million in damage. The common thread: Homeless men living on the street are the accused.

The homeless are on the streets because they don’t have homes — or so many of their so-called advocates claim. They see homelessness as a disease and prescribing housing as the first step to a cure — with housing seen as a right, like they believe health care should be.

But these advocates ignore the reasons at least three out of every four people experiencing homelessness end up sleeping on the sidewalks and asking passersby for cash: They suffer from untreated mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction, or both. Their chaotic, self-destructive behavior caused them to be unemployable, and they burned the bridges to their immediate family.

In 1955, before the advent of commercially available psychotropic drugs to treat mental illness, some 550,000 Americans were confined in mental asylums, with one of the common “cures” being a frontal lobotomy. Today, that number stands at about 40,000. But accounting for population growth, if the mental health system of 65 years ago were in use today, there’d be more than 1.1 million people institutionalized.

This 1.1 million figure is interesting for the following reason: Large numbers of people with mental illness are, with drugs or other therapies, able to function as productive members of society — but evidence suggests equally large numbers aren’t, whether because they’ve never been diagnosed and treated, or because they have, but for some reason didn’t follow through on the regimen prescribed for them.

Almost 600,000 Americans were homeless in 2022, of whom about 40 percent, or a bit less than a quarter of a million, were estimated to be living on the streets rather than in shelters. Many of these individuals cycle in and out of local jails for committing crimes such as theft, assault, and vandalism.

The Seattle metropolitan area has grappled with its homeless challenge for many years now. But the more money it throws at the problem, the worse it gets. In 2018, Chris Rufo calculated that more than $1 billion annually was spent to address homelessness — almost $100,000 a year for every homeless person. Moreover, because of the way the taxpayer funds are spent — on housing with no rules or expectations of treatment (a policy known as “Housing First”) — addiction, violent crime, sex trafficking, and thievery have increased, especially in neighborhoods hosting facilities that house more than a couple dozen homeless people in one place.

Austin’s Experience

Returning to Austin, the city’s residents have suffered leftist public policy firsthand as the city council defunded and disempowered the police while welcoming the homeless. And, as Rufo has found, the homeless are attracted to locations more amenable to their lifestyle, especially when they’re offered shelter with no rules. In short order, the unhoused — the new euphemism for many people who, at one time, were called bums, tramps, vagabonds, vagrants, or beggars — filled the sidewalks, parks, and freeway underpasses.

Austin permitted camping on July 1, 2019. The Austin Police Department subsequently reported that more than half, 19 of 36, of pedestrian fatalities that year were among the unsheltered population. The police department, likely under pressure from the left-wing city council, stopped providing details on pedestrian deaths after 2019.

After the change in camping policy, the number of unhoused people in the Austin and Travis County area jumped 134 percent, from 1,104 to 2,374, over four years from 2018 to 2022.

Predictably, the city’s pedestrian deaths spiked 59 percent from 2018 to 2022, from 32 to 51, a local NPR station calculated. The Austin City Council erased restrictions on living on public property in 2019. Extrapolating from 2019’s numbers, 27 of 2022’s pedestrian fatalities were likely homeless at the time of their deaths.

The damage caused by the homeless extends beyond self-harm. When a homeless person assaults or rapes someone, shoplifts from a small business, or gets hit by a driver who is subsequently traumatized, public safety and peace of mind are shattered. Added to that, homeless individuals suffering from an overdose or a mental crisis make repeated trips to emergency rooms or the local jail that cost millions of dollars.

As the officers of the Austin Police Department contend with left-wing policies that prevent them from keeping public order — or punish them if they do — morale has plunged. Austin also cut $150 million from the police budget in 2020, including canceling cadet classes due to city council concerns about recruiting and training (the cut classes were Austin PD’s most diverse yet). Thus, Austin, like other major cities, has seen an outflow of police officers. It’s gotten bad enough that in late March it was announced that Texas state troopers will help patrol Austin.

Left-wing mismanagement of our urban areas can’t continue indefinitely. If the voters and those they elect won’t change, the cities will decline and lose relevance, following the path of Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, and now even Los Angeles. The other possibility is that frustrated residents and courageous politicians will buck leftist orthodoxy and work to reform civil commitment laws and drug treatment systems, and start to put criminals behind bars.


Source

Trump kicks off 2024 campaign with Waco rally [Video]



Trump kicks off 2024 campaign with Waco rally

Slams Biden admin’s ‘weaponization’ of justice system

NYP

Donald Trump denounced “The Biden regime’s weaponization of our system of justice” in Waco, Tex. Saturday with a defiant speech as his potential indictment by a Manhattan grand jury loomed.

“For seven years, you and I have been taking on the corrupt, rotten, sinister forces trying to destroy America,” Trump — in his usual blue suit but without his trademark red tie — told the crowd at the first public rally of his 2024 presidential campaign.

“The Biden regime’s weaponization of our system of justice is straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show,” he said.

“This is really prosecutorial misconduct,” Trump said of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s effort to indict him. “The innocence of people makes no difference to these radical left maniacs.”

“They have nothing!” Trump exclaimed of Bragg’s probe – adding that the DA “stacked his office with DC operatives to make sure that Trump got taken care of.”

“I never even liked horseface,” he said, referring to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claimed they had a long-ago sexual encounter. “That wouldn’t be the one. There is no one, we have a great First Lady,” he said, segueing into praise for wife Melania Trump.

“Our opponents have done everything they can to destroy our spirit and crush our will,” he added. “Put me back in the White House and America will be a free nation once again.”

Donald TrumpFormer President Donald Trump denounced “The Biden regime’s weaponization of our system of justice” in Waco, Texas. AP

Trump’s branded red-white-and-blue Boeing 757 circled the airfield over the heads of the crowd — to the strains of “Danger Zone” from “Top Gun” — minutes before he took the stage.

***

[Vidio insert by (TLB) editors]

***

He stilled the crowd to listen to a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — as sung by jailed January 6 rioters — before striding to the podium.

“All of the hatred, rage, and contempt the radical left has for your and your values has been directed to me,” he said. “And the only way to stop these arsonists is to rebuke and reject this persecution by sending us back to the White House in 2024.”

“Either we surrender to the demonic forces demolishing our country, or we defeat them in a landslide,” Trump warned. “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.”

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