Donald Trump News for June 1, 2016

And the race is on: The mainstream media, which is already in the tank for whomever the Democratic nominee for president will be, seems stunned by the most up-to-date polling that shows GOP nominee-in-waiting Donald Trump pulling to dead-even with [the most likely] Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton. As CNN noted today in its “Poll of Polls:”

Throughout March and April, public polling on the presidential race found Clinton well ahead of Trump, with the former secretary of state holding double-digit leads over the businessman in 10 out of the 14 polls that met CNN’s standards for reporting in those months.

A string of polls released in the last two weeks, however, suggest a much tighter contest. For the most part, those tightened margins come from a more unified Republican Party. Across the five polls included in the Poll of Polls, Clinton averaged 6% support among self-identified Republicans. Polls from the same organizations in late-March and April found Clinton averaging 12% support among Republicans.

What changed? Trump sealed the deal. Indeed, he did – and technically speaking, Clinton as yet to do so. Oh, and there’s the fact that Trump has drawn out record numbers of Republican voters. More from CNN here.

Even Hollywood is taking notice: There may not be much visible support for Trump in Tinsel Town, but that doesn’t mean that Hollywood isn’t taking note of his remarkable, unique campaign. Seems everyone these days wants in on it. As such, even the Hollywood Reporter has sent someone to cover The Donald’s California primary campaign. The piece begins thusly:

The long day is ending for Donald Trump with a pint of vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream. We’re settling in for a late-night chat at his Beverly Hills house, a 10,400-square-foot Colonial mansion directly across from the Beverly Hills Hotel. He’s here for the final presidential primary, a California coronation of sorts, after rallies in Orange County (where violence broke out and seven people were arrested). He is, as he has been for much of our conversation — and perhaps much of the last year — marveling at his own campaign. “You looked outside before, you see what’s going on,” he boasts about the police surrounding his house, and the Secret Service detail cramming his garage and snaking around the pool at the center of the front drive. And he’s just returned from a big donor fundraiser in Brentwood for the Republican Party at the home of Tom Barrack, the investor and former Miramax co-owner. “There had to be over a thousand policeman. They had a neighborhood roped off, four or five blocks away from this beautiful house. Machine guns all over the place.” 

And, later:

If onstage he calls people names, more privately he has only good, embracing things to say about almost everybody. (For most public people I know, it is the opposite.) He loves everybody. Genuinely seems to love everybody — at least everybody who’s rich and successful (he doesn’t really talk about anyone who isn’t). Expressing love for everybody, for most of us, would clearly seem to be an act. But with Trump, it’s the name-calling and bluster that might be the act.

It’s a great read, and it’s here.

Why I stand with Donald Trump: From Bernie Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, at RealClearPolitics:

As a backer of former Republican presidential candidates, I now stand in support of Donald J. Trump because the fate of this nation depends upon sending him, and not Hillary Clinton, to the White House. 

I know Donald Trump, but we’re not close friends. However, I believe he will begin on Day One undoing the damage done by President Barack Obama. I stand ready to help him at every turn.

And, on his founding of his company:

We could not do this today, for the same reason why so many Americans have dropped out of the workforce, why their wages have been stagnant, why their health care is a mess, and why our economy has stalled. It’s Obama/Clinton-style government that’s getting in the way.

I have never seen our government as hostile to free enterprise, especially small business, as it is today. It is driving over-regulation, over-taxation, over-litigation, and over-spending. These “overs” are killing small businesses, which create the majority of new jobs in America. There’s much more, here.