TRUMP vs PAUL RYAN: TRUMP WINS (THE MEETING)

TRUMP vs PAUL RYAN: TRUMP WINS

TRUMP & RYAN ARE PLANNING TO TALK OUT DIFFERENCES.

IS PAUL RYAN BEING BLACKMAILED?

Sources: ABC,  Fox News, CNN, WSJ, Talking Points Memo, YouTube

US House Speaker and staunch Republican Paul Ryan publicly denounces his support for presumptive 2016 GOP Presidential Candidate Donald J Trump, yet no one thinks this is strange or out of character for Ryan.

Both Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney publicly state they would rather support Hillary Clinton than Trump and yet no one questions these unusual, out of character remarks from these two GOP Giants?

Could it be that the NSA has collected dirt on Ryan and Romney and they are being Blackmailed by the Democrats?

Trump and Ryan are planning to meet in the near future to discuss their ideological differences.

Stay Tuned.

***** Mr. Trump Goes to Washington: Inside His Capitol Hill Meetings

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will travel to Washington, D.C., Thursday for a series of meetings with top Republican leaders in an effort to bring the party together after a messy and divisive primary race.

Trump has at least three meetings planned with GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who largely spurned his presidential campaign during the GOP primary.

He'll first meet with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Republican National CommitteeChairman Reince Priebus at the RNC at 9 a.m. Trump will then meet with Ryan and the other members on his leadership team: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, R-Washington, and Deputy Majority Whip Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina.

Ryan and McMorris-Rodgers have not yet endorsed Trump's campaign, while McCarthy and Scalise have said they will support the Republican nominee.

Later Thursday morning, Trump will meet with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, along with his leadership team: Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, and John Thune, R-South Dakota. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- Senate Republicans' campaign arm -- will also attend the meeting at the NRSC headquarters.

One person Trump won't be meeting? His former rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who told reporters today that Trump has not been in touch with him. "There are no plans for us to meet," Cruz said.

TRUMP GRABS FLORIDA BECAUSE RUBIO HAS FALLEN AND CAN'T SEEM TO GET UP

TRUMP GRABS FLORIDA BECAUSE RUBIO HAS FALLEN AND CAN'T SEEM TO GET UP:

HAVE ROMNEY & OTHER GOP ESTABLISHMENT LEADERS RUINED RUBIO'S POLITICAL FUTURE?

Sources: Washington Post, Youtube

After listening to GOP establishment leaders and strategists who advised him to pummel 2016 presidential Frontrunner DONALD TRUMP with silly insults, it now appears as if Trump's challenger U.S. Senator MARCO RUBIO has taken a nosedive.

Rubio's plan to destroy Trump with insults has backfired terribly and made him appear like a desperate career politician willing to do anything to win.

It's no doubt Rubio is finished on the 2016 presidential campaign trail but what about his future political endeavors?

Many people predict that Rubio won't even be able to carry his home state during the Florida Primary on March 15.

So is Rubio finished and destined to return to the private sector?

Stay tuned.

**** Inside Rubio’s collapse: A fateful decision that helped unravel his campaign

Marco Rubio had suffered three electoral thumpings in a row when the senator from Florida and his image-makers abruptly shifted strategy. The aspirational candidate, whose presidential campaign was built on a promise of generational change and Republican unity, would morph overnight into Donald Trump’s chief assailant.

Rubio launched what he and his team felt was an imperative assault on the front-runner at the Houston debate on Feb. 25.

The next morning at a Dallas rally, he mocked Trump mercilessly. Rubio whipped out his iPhone and, with boyish glee, read aloud the billionaire mogul’s misspelled tweets. He made fun of Trump’s makeup and “sweat mustache,” and suggested the mogul had wet his pants.

For the next three days, Rubio’s crude schoolyard taunts continued: over Trump’s made-in-China suits, his “horrible spray tan” and his small hands — a quip that, as Trump would later explain on the debate stage in Detroit, implied something else was small, too.

Rubio's benefactors were aghast to see their candidate practicing Trump’s gutter politics. “Everyone went, ‘What?. . . Why are you going down to that level?’ ” recalled one fundraiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “You might as well support Trump.”

Looking back, Rubio’s supporters see these fateful days as central to his unraveling.

A strategy designed to get under Trump’s skin and force him on the defensive instead backfired on Rubio, diminishing the 44-year-old senator who had spent years trying to demonstrate presidential gravitas. At rally after rally, Rubio was unintentionally personifying the caricature that Trump was perpetually drawing of him: “Little Marco.”

The results were not pretty. Rubio lost 18 of the next 20 contests, with his only wins in Minnesota’s caucuses and Puerto Rico’s primary. The ultimate humiliation came on Tuesday, when Rubio performed so poorly in four states — he got just 5 percent in Mississippi — that he was shut out from gaining any delegates.

A reflective Rubio expressed regret Wednesday over his name-calling of Trump, saying at an MSNBC town hall that the insults had upset his children.

“In terms of things that have to do with personal stuff, yeah, at the end of the day it’s not something I’m entirely proud of,” Rubio said. “My kids were embarrassed by it, and if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t.”

A cloud of fatalism

Rubio vowed to soldier on into next Tuesday’s must-win Florida primary. “I will campaign as long and as hard as it takes,” the senator, joined by wife, Jeanette, said at a Wednesday evening rally in Hialeah, a heavily Cuban American city outside of his Miami home town.

But a cloud of fatalism now hovers over his campaign. Aides on Wednesday tried to beat back rumors he would quit the race — perhaps before Thursday’s CNN debate in Miami. Donors exchanged grim messages about Rubio’s fate in Florida, where his campaign, short on cash, is running no advertisements. New polls showed him trailing Trump here badly.

Supporters in the small and subdued Hialeah crowd all but conceded defeat. “I’ve been around for a long time,” said Sal Pittelli, 70. “And you can smell the flop sweat.”

Meanwhile, rival Ted Cruz of Texas, campaigning in Miami, needled Rubio by arguing that his was the only “credible path” to deny Trump the nomination.

It's certainly a possibility that he could lose on Tuesday, and perhaps by double digits,” said John McKager “Mac” Stipano­vich, a Tallahassee lobbyist and Rubio supporter. “He’s sworn to win, which might take some divine intervention, but that’s what he’s said, and he’s trying to persuade the people who love him and follow him that that’s the case.”

There was evidence of some Rubio enthusiasm in South Florida. Blue “Florida Is Marco Rubio Country” signs adorn many lawns and busy intersections, and the campaign has secured valuable airtime on Radio Mambi, an AM station that is popular among the region’s Cuban Americans. Rubio aides host 15-minute segments each morning.

Adam Hasner, Rubio’s Florida campaign co-chairman, dismissed the suggestion that Rubio might drop out before the primary. He noted that Rubio plans to attend a series of Florida fundraisers on Friday and would campaign hard across the state.

“He has demonstrated that he has a message that resonates and he’s the right messenger,” Hasner said. “He’s come so far in six years, to leave it a couple of yards from the goal line and taking a knee on third down? It’s just not who Marco Rubio is.”

Rubio’s major donors are descending on Miami for a finance retreat. They will be joined for lunch Thursdayby New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, an endorser, and by Rubio at breakfast Friday.

Rubio’s backers on Capitol Hill tried to show a united front of optimism amid the negative chatter.

“I hope Marco wins. I know he’s working really hard. I’m with him on this,” said Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.). But she declined to address next steps if Rubio does not win Florida. “We’re positive,” she said. “I think he’s the guy, going to keep supporting him. We’ll find out next week.”

Other Rubio associates were downright despondent. They were reticent to speak openly because they did not want to damage their friend’s prospects, but one confessed privately, “I don’t see how this campaign continues.”

Miami locals who know Rubio and his family and have supported his campaigns over the years said they blame Rubio’s advisers for improperly managing what seemed to them only a few weeks ago like a sure thing.

“Up until he started talking about how Trump has a small penis, it was brilliant,” said the same friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “Focusing on the size of his hands or the color of his skin — that was stupid.”

‘Pretty much finished’

There are a multitude of reasons to account for Rubio’s collapse: He is a career politician in a season when GOP primary voters crave outsiders; he was the subject of tens of millions of dollars in negative advertising from former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s super PAC; he could not raise enough money to keep up his own ad blitz; his ground game was weak; and his Senate work seeking comprehensive immigration reform constituted apostasy to many conservatives.

Yet another reason is that Rubio has no natural base. In the sprawling field, he was never the most experienced establishment-friendly candidate (that was Bush), nor the most conservative ideological warrior (Cruz), nor the rebellious outsider (Trump).

“Beyond the appeal of his personal story, I’m not sure Marco ever grew a constituency that would carry him to the finish line,” said Stipanovich, who initially supported Bush.

Interviews with more than a dozen Rubio advisers, fundraisers and other supporters suggest that perhaps the key inflection point came in that late-February change of strategy on Trump, when Rubio sacrificed the uplifting message that had won over late-deciding voters in Iowa and South Carolina for an all-out brawl.

was when private pollsters tracking the race began to see Rubio’s favorability rating and his standing in the horse race stall out and soon erode.

Consider Kansas, where one private poll showed Cruz, Rubio and Trump in a virtual tie a week before the caucuses there. Rubio lunged for the win: He trumpeted the endorsements of Gov. Sam Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts, as well as the revered former Senate leader Robert J. Dole, and campaigned hard there for a full day. But in last Saturday’s voting, Rubio ended up a distant third with 16.7 percent; Cruz won with nearly half of the vote.

Rubio found himself locked in a downward spiral. He kept arguing on the stump that he was the most electable candidate and could unite all factions of the Republican Party. Yet electable candidates are expected to win — and Rubio was mostly losing.

“Those exchanges with Mr. Trump were damaging,” Al Cardenas, a conservative activist who is a Bush friend and a former Rubio employer, wrote in an email. “Perhaps not as damaging as the dismal results in Kansas, Maine and Louisiana. If you finish under 20 percent in the South, Midwest and Northeast, this far out in the campaign, you are pretty much finished.”

‘It was a conscious decision’

Rubio’s pivot to Trump was by all accounts deliberate and carefully planned. With the exception of his debate meltdown in New Hampshire — when he was mocked for robotically repeating talking points — Rubio had a strong early February, slowly gaining momentum, money and high-wattage endorsements. Once Trump beat him and Cruz in South Carolina and Nevada, however, Rubio’s supporters agitated for him to take a more aggressive stance or risk letting Trump run away with the nomination.

Randy Kendrick, an influential conservative donor, said she and her husband, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, encouraged Rubio to go on the offensive, “defining Trump.”

“Stand up for what we believe in,” she said. “If we lose, okay. But he will be able to say, ‘We did the right thing.’ ”

As the Houston debate approached, the senior leadership of Rubio’s campaign decided to go after Trump. They fed the candidate a mountain of opposition research about Trump’s business dealings and past liberal positions. Senior adviser Todd Harris, who runs Rubio’s debate preparation sessions, helped him develop specific lines of attack that would serve Trump some of his own medicine.

“Rubio felt he needed to point out some of Trump’s massive inconsistencies — and to try to do it with a little bit of humor,” said one Republican with knowledge of the preparations, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “It was a conscious decision.”

In the post-debate spin room, Rubio’s team boasted that their candidate had finally found Trump’s Kryptonite.

“Donald Trump has always been effective at picking up someone’s perceived weakness, and really exploiting it,” campaign manager Terry Sullivan told reporters. “Well, guess what? Marco has Donald’s number. And it’s that this is a joke.”

Harris told reporters that Rubio had proved he could “mix it up” by mocking Trump. “Was it a substantive argument? No,” he admitted. “But as we’ve seen from most of, if not all of, the media coverage over the past eight months, trying to wage a battle of substance against Trump is a pretty futile effort.”

At that point, Harris described the petty attacks as a tactic, not a new strategy. “We’re not going to go chase all of these little temporary narratives, temporary media trends, and whatever seems to be trending on Twitter,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of Marco’s stump speech is positive, and that’s not going to change.”

Not 12 hours later, Rubio’s stump speech had changed — dramatically. At a rally in downtown Dallas, Rubio spent close to eight minutes taking potshots at Trump, even as his audience’s titters turned to nervous unease.

“First [Trump] had this little makeup thing applying, like, makeup around his mustache because he had one of those sweat mustaches,” Rubio said. “Then, then he asked for a full-length mirror. . . . He wanted a full-length mirror, maybe to make sure his pants weren’t wet — I don’t know.”

The speech was carried live on cable news. Donors swamped Rubio and his advisers with messages urging him to abandon the insult-fest. Eventually, after he lost 10 of 11 states on Super Tuesday, Rubio dropped the line of attack.

In the days that followed, Rubio insisted his swipes at Trump did not define his candidacy. Trump is a bully, he said, and bullies must be stood up to. Then at Wednesday’s MSNBC town hall, Rubio not only voiced regret, but also blamed the insult-spewing front-runner for setting a juvenile tone for the entire race.

“I don’t want to be that,” Rubio said. “If that’s what it takes to become president of the United States, then I don’t want to be president.”

RUBIO SHOULD CONCEDE AFTER THE FLORIDA PRIMARY (MR NICE GUY)

Delegates won

1,237 needed for nomination · 1,585 available

RUBIO SHOULD CONCEDE AFTER THE FLORIDA PRIMARY (MR NICE GUY)

IS RUBIO BEING DELUSIONAL BY REMAINING IN THE 2016 RACE?

HAS HE RUINED HIS NICE GUY IMAGE?

Sources: AP, Fox News, NY Mag,  USA Today, YouTube

After months of being on the 2016 presidential campaign trail and millions of dollars donated to his coffers, U.S. Senator MARCO RUBIO (Fl) has only won one state (MINNESOTA) and one U.S. Territory (PUERTO RICO).

Marco is a really nice, articulate, handsome guy. So why isn't he winning?

At one point Marco appeared to be on the comeback until he listened to some GOP Establishment strategists who advised him to go Postal on DONALD TRUMP.

Big Mistake!

Everyone knows Trump is a Marketing Genius who eats insults for breakfast.

Marco's attacks on Trump have since backfired and now his rivals Trump & Ted Cruz are calling for him to concede from the race.

In fact as the FLORIDA Primary approaches on March 15,  it's questionable as to whether or Rubio can still carry his home state.

Should Rubio remain in the 2016 race on a wing and a prayer?

Or should Rubio stop being delusional and concede immediately following the Florida primary even if he does win the primary?

Stay tuned.

**** Marco Rubio Wins the Puerto Rico Primary, But He and the GOP Establishment Are Still Doomed

While residents of Puerto Rico aren’t allowed to vote in presidential elections, they are allowed to help select the nominees, and with most of Sunday's primary results in, Republicans on the island have overwhelming chosen Marco Rubio as their candidate, according to Decision Desk HQ and ABC News. 

He has even, so far, won more than 70 percent of the vote, meaning he's met the 50 percent threshold to keep all of Puerto Rico’s 23 delegates for himself. 

Thus, Rubio gets to give his second victory speech that corresponds to an actual victory, though the win is unlikely to make much of a difference, especially after his dismal performance in Saturday’s contests. 

Just how badly did those go? 

The New Yorker's John Cassidy has the tally:

In Kansas, Rubio had received endorsements from Republican Governor Sam Brownback and Bob Dole, the state’s longtime senator and the Republican Presidential candidate in 1996. The support didn’t do Rubio any good. The result in Maine, which is known as one of the few remaining holdouts of moderate Republicanism, was equally disappointing for him. 

After Jeb Bush dropped out of the race, Rubio must have expected to pick up some of his votes. But to the extent that anybody benefited from Bush’s departure, it appears to have been John Kasich, who came third. 

In addition, the results in Kentucky and Louisiana, where Rubio got sixteen per cent and eleven per cent of the vote respectively, confirmed his failure to make inroads in the South.

But one supposedly good sign from Rubio’s landslide win in Puerto Rico is that Florida, whose winner-take-all GOP primary is on March 15, has the largest population of Puerto Ricans in the country. 

So, theoretically, the demographics mean good future news for Rubio — not that he needs any convincing. Offering yet another optimistic spin on losing on Saturday, Rubio insisted that, “This map only gets better for us as we move forward in some of the other states.” Unless it doesn’t. 

The American Conservative’s Noah Millman offers a helpful reminder:

Florida has been polled six times this year. 

Rubio has never led. 

In the most recent February polls, he has trailed Trump by between 15 and 20 points. Florida was also polled 21 times in 2015. Rubio never led in any of those polls either. 

Rubio is significantly less-popular in his home state that Cruz is in his, or Kasich is in his — or, I’d venture, than Trump is in his. 

Rubio's best chance of winning his home state is that Cruz’s efforts to out-hustle him boost the Texan’s standing at the expense of Trump rather than Rubio, and enable the Florida Senator to win a close three-way race. Otherwise, he’s probably toast.

Millman goes on to point out that Rubio's new role in the race is to play the unwitting spoiler to any effort to beat Trump, since the best way he could now help that crusade is by dropping out and allowing his voters to shift to other non-Trump candidates and maybe turn the delegate tide. 

Fat chance of that happening, argues The Week’s James Poulos:

For all his talent and good intentions, Rubio proved that there's something much worse in this populist season than being born on third and thinking you just hit a triple. 

However subliminal, his sense of upwardly mobile entitlement was weirdly off-putting and perversely reminiscent of the entitled yes-kid who thinks he should get what he wants because he knows exactly how to give his teachers and school administrators exactly what they want. 

Rather than embodying the 20th-century Republican story of increase earned through luck and pluck, he became an avatar of the 21st-century striver whose stock in trade is his special snowflakehood. 

Nevertheless, a hard core of party bigs still seem convinced he's essential to the GOP's future. 

And left to his devices, Rubio will not drop out, before or after Florida. 

He will become a pawn in a grand yet tawdry game of thrones at the convention — and in so doing, it's safe to say, put the GOP at far greater peril of being split to pieces than anything Trump and Cruz can manage together. 

Rubio is the face of a wing of the party that acts like the future but is really yesterday's news. 

And thinks it's full of winners but, so many times already, has decisively lost.

But the Republican Establishment could still push Rubio out, right? 

Not if it requires them to acknowledge some fundamental realities they have shown zero interest in accepting thus far. 

Here's Millman again:  [T]he GOP establishment doesn’t really want to stop Trump. What they want is to back the candidate of their choosing, someone they know will be reliable on the issues that matter most to them, and who they also believe they can sell. 

They have made excuses at every twist and turn of this campaign in terms of how different things would have been if just one little thing had gone differently — and bewailed the good electoral fortune showered on candidates whom they cannot abide. 

But they cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that it’s not bad luck. 

The primary electorate really, really doesn’t want to vote for someone the party leadership has blessed. 

Frankly, they’d prefer someone completely unacceptable to that leadership.

After all, those unacceptable, uncontrollable, unaccountable candidates — Trump and Cruz — have between them won an outright majority of the vote, and sometimes an overwhelming majority, in every single primary and caucus so far, save two: New Hampshire and Vermont. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is no anti-Trump majority to consolidate. 

There is an anti-establishment majority. 

And the only question has been which candidate, if any, will consolidate it.

So as the race currently stands, Rubio may think of himself as the anti-Trumpiest candidate in the GOP field, and may still believe he represents the party's best hope to defeat both Donald and Hillary Clinton, but by electing to stay in the race, even just through Florida, Rubio may be casting his and all his supporters' votes for Trump.

TRUMP FIRES RUBIO, TELLS HIM TO CONCEDE (FLORIDA PRIMARY)

TRUMP FIRES RUBIO, TELLS HIM TO CONCEDE:

RUBIO SHOULD NEVER HAVE GONE POSTAL ON TRUMP AS ROMNEY WANTED.

HAS RUBIO TARNISHED HIS NICE GUY IMAGE FOREVER?

Sources: NBC News, CNN, BREITBART, Youtube

**** Donald Trump Celebrates 2 Wins, Calls on Rubio to Drop Out

Donald Trump celebrated his wins in Kentucky and Louisiana Saturday, calling for Marco Rubio to drop out of the 2016 race and saying he wants a "one on one" contest against Ted Cruz. 

"I think it's time now that he drop out of the race," he said of Rubio, who has won just one contest to date. 

"I think it's time for Marco to clean the deck," he added later in the press conference. "I do. And I say that respectfully.

Rubio campaign spokesman called Trump a "con artist" in response, and suggested that Trump is worried Rubio will win the Florida primary and gain momentum. 

A relatively subdued Trump, who appeared at Trump International in West Palm Beach, congratulated Cruz on his wins in Maine and Kansas, though he said his own campaign "really didn't spend very much time" in either state. 

"He should do well in Maine, because it's very close to Canada," he joked of Cruz. "Let's face it." 

Just after he suggested he wanted a "one on one" race against Cruz, Trump also pushed for unity, saying that the party should "come together and stop this foolishness.

Alluding to suggestions that mainstream Republicans could mount a third party candidate if Trump is the nominee, Trump warned against the possibility of splitting conservatives in the general election. 

"It 100 percent guarantees the election of the Democrat," he said, adding that the next president will name multiple Supreme Court justices. 

Trump supporters filled the front rows of the press conference and reacted to some questions from the press, including boos when one reporter asked about this week's back-and-forth with Marco Rubio regarding the size of his hands. 

Indicating a member of his golf club in the audience, Trump asked: "Do I hit the ball good? Do I hit the ball long? Is Trump strong?" 

The press conference was delayed while Trump awaited results from the GOP primary in Kentucky. 

"I've been in competitions all my life. There is nothing so exciting as this stuff," he said when he began his remarks. 

Trump announced the projected Kentucky win around an hour before the close contest was called. 

"We won the two big ones, folks," Trump said, adding the states were Louisiana and Kentucky, at around 10 p.m. E.T. in Florida.

When informed the Kentucky race hadn't been called, Trump left behind closed doors, but time would prove him right. NBC News and other outlets projected Trump would win Kentucky over Cruz shortly before 11 p.m. 

ROMNEY BREAKS HIS "NO THIRD BID" PROMISE (HILLARY CELEBRATES)

SELFISH ROMNEY BREAKS HIS "NO THIRD BID" PROMISE:

ROMNEY & GOP ESTABLISHMENT LEADERS PLOT "SCREW THE VOTERS" BROKERED RNC CONVENTION.

HILLARY & OBAMA CELEBRATE EARLY VICTORY.

Sources: Newsmax, CNN, Infowars, NBC News, USA Today, Youtube

**** CNN: Romney Plans to Block Trump in Brokered Convention

Mitt Romney is hoping for a brokered Republican convention in July to stop Donald Trump from winning the nomination, CNN reports.

He has instructed close advisers for look into ways to make this happen.

"The goal is to lock him out at the convention," CNN correspondent Jamie Gangel told Wolf Blitzer, citing sources close to the former Massachusetts governor. "Now, they have to get to the convention, but that's the long-term strategy.

"And implicit in that is that Mitt Romney could offer himself up as a white knight to save the party," she said.

Romney slammed Trump Thursday as a fraud who is playing the American public for suckers.

Gangel called Romney's speech "the opening volley" in a GOP strategy that also includes urging all the current candidates to stay in the race to stop Trump from winning the required number of delegates.

"Expect the GOP leadership establishment to hit harder and harder on Trump," she added, primarily on releasing his tax returns.

"There is a thought that he is not as rich or as liquid as he says he is — and they think they can undermine him by doing that," Gangel told Blitzer.

The ultimate goal is to force Trump into a third-party run — and she said that her Romney sources were "willing to take that chance.

"It's better than having him as the Republican nominee."