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Earlier today, Donald Trump traveled to Mexico City to meet with the Mexican president. This meeting was pretty spontaneous, as it was only announced yesterday, and it took many observers by surprise. It was a risky move for Trump, with plenty of opportunities for it to turn out badly. But Trump exceeded expectations, as he appeared afterwards and read a prepared statement, then took a few questions from the press.
Senator John McCain is, as I type this, awaiting the results of today's Arizona primary election. The outcome will likely be that he will once again obtain the Republican Party's nomination for his Senate seat. But the results will probably be a lot closer than any of McCain's other primary races, because he is facing a Tea Party (or perhaps "Trumpesque") challenger who actually has a chance to unseat McCain. Discontent with McCain (and Establishment Republicans in general) from the Republican base voters is palpable -- so much so that McCain has been forced to support Donald Trump's campaign, even after Trump personally insulted him (and all American prisoners of war, for good measure) in a very public manner. But even if McCain, as expected, wins tonight, he'll then go on to face a Democratic challenger in what could also be a very tight race for him.
Republicans have now, by my count, missed two rather large opportunities to improve their general standing with Latino voters. Donald Trump's speech Wednesday (unless it is further postponed or even cancelled outright, of course) might just become the third big missed opportunity. This is a problem entirely of the Republicans' making, since they are caught in a spiral of trying to prove (to each other) how pure their opposition to immigration truly is. They keep redefining the ugly term they toss around (at each other) to describe apostates on the subject, and now will label anything short of deporting 11 million people as "amnesty." This is the trap Trump found himself in, all last week.
It's still only August, but already the predictions that this would be an exceedingly banal presidential election campaign look like they've already come true. This week's campaign news might be summed up as an elementary school playground shouting match: "You're a bigot!" "No, you're a bigot!" Sigh. We've still got over two months of this to get through, folks. And nobody sane expects things are going to get any better any time soon -- quite the opposite, in fact.
Some weeks, it's tough coming up with a subtitle for these columns. Some weeks, not so much. This is one of the latter, because the juxtaposition of a colorful (to say the least) description of Donald Trump with a soap opera's title just naturally presented itself.
It's Monday, so Donald Trump just stood up in front of the cameras and read another speech off a TelePrompTer. For the second week in a row, this is supposed to present Trump as being a serious-minded candidate who can manage to "be presidential" when required. But if the past is any prologue, by the end of the week nobody's going to even remember this speech, because by then Trump will have had at least two or three blowups out on the campaign trail -- which will become the story, instead.
This column has always loved a good rant. Most of the time, we provide our own rant at the end of the column, on a subject too big to be contained in talking points. This week, we provide a number of rants from Republicans about their very own party's presidential nominee. Yes, it's only August and the Republican Party is coming apart at the seams. Which, of course, makes for great summertime reading for all!
I am an Irish and American woman reporting from the 2016 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. I say I am Irish and American because I am an Irish citizen who is now an American citizen too. I have noticed a theme in recent blogs posted to the Irish Times' Generation Emigration blog. Many fellow expats are wondering if they are still really Irish, given they have lived outside of Ireland for many years and in some cases longer than they lived in Ireland. I too have been thinking that I am losing my connection to my native land. The recent Irish elections that did not have a clear majority, and then the Brexit results, have opened up even more questions than the votes sought to resolve. I am now trying not to get too excited about the possibility of seeing a united Ireland in my lifetime.
Day One of the Democratic National Convention is now over, and tonight seemed designed to allow Bernie Sanders supporters to vent their frustrations, given the lineup of speakers. All the most liberal and progressive speakers were lined up for the first night, which only served to concentrate the energy for Bernie Sanders. At first it was announced that Bernie would speak tonight, but not in primetime. Later this was changed to give Bernie the final speaking slot of the night (which was entirely the right move for the convention to make), but instead of getting into all of that I'm just going to jot down my initial reactions to the spectacle of the first night.
Donald Trump finally stopped talking, so I can now start writing. His speech went on for almost an hour and a half, which was a bit much for me -- especially after an exhausting week of listening to Republicans talk. But that's the end of the evening, so let's go back to the beginning and see how we got here.