If Donald Trump Wins ....

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/if-trump-wins-ill-eat-this-column/article29287461/

As much as numerous people may not wish Donald Trump to be elected the President of the USA,
I do not believe that I will rule him out.

MARGARET WENTE
If Trump wins, I’ll eat this column
MARGARET WENTE
The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Mar. 18, 2016 10:43AM EDT
Last updated Friday, Mar. 18, 2016 1:34PM EDT
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All my friends are asking me if there’s any way Donald Trump can get elected president. My answer is to cross my fingers and say no.

I say this because I believe the American people are not, ultimately, batshit crazy. Mr. Trump appeals to their lizard brain. I believe, perhaps naively, that most voters will still possess some remnant of executive function on election day.

Conrad Black does not agree with me. The normally astute Mr. Black has been shilling for Mr. Trump for some time now. Perhaps it’s the mischievous contrarian in him. Or perhaps it’s because Mr. Trump stood up for Mr. Black during his recent troubles, and he owes him. At any rate, Mr. Black writes that “Donald Trump is very close to one of the most astonishing political victories in American history.”

A better bet is that Donald Trump will lead the Republican Party (or what’s left of it) into the abyss. It will be the worst rout since Barry Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson in 1964 by 23 percentage points.

I’m assuming Mr. Trump gets the nomination. I can’t see how he won’t. But the electoral math is dreadful. Demographics are not on the GOP’s side. Angry white guys are a shrinking minority of the population. Perhaps half of all Republicans dislike Mr. Trump, and won’t vote for him. Thoughtful people in the party (there are some) believe a Trump nomination will be suicide. The ethical ones will fight him to the bitter end. The opportunistic ones will try to explain why the guy who was a nation-wrecker yesterday is just the man the country needs tomorrow.

Mr. Trump will be opposed by the entire mainstream media except Fox News. Which, come to think of it, might work to his advantage.

Mr. Black actually believes that Mr. Trump can fix the corrupt U.S. government system. In fact, he wants to destroy it, along with what remains of the culture of consensus and compromise. He’s a wrecking ball. He believes experts are idiots and wears his ignorance with pride. He acts on instinct and impulse, makes up stuff as he goes along and scatters his lies like confetti. He’s written more books than he’s read. This does not hurt his ratings. It enhances them.

To Trump backers, this election is not about policy and expertise. It’s about power and domination. He is the Alpha Male, and all of his opponents are wimps with shrivelled testicles (or none at all). If you want a preview of his campaign, check out the attack ad currently playing on Instagram. It shows Hillary Clinton barking like a dog as a terrorist aims a gun and Vladimir Putin snickers. Oh dear.

How does Ms. Clinton counter that? She can’t out-tough Mr. Trump. But therapeutic nurturing clichés (“Let’s make America whole again”) won’t cut it either. She’ll have to keep reminding people she’s the sane one. Maybe she could dig up that daisy ad from 1964 – the one warning that Mr. Goldwater was loony enough to push the nuclear button.

Remember hope and change? This election is about fear and loathing. Never have two candidates been so disliked as Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton are. The voters don’t trust either of them. (Only 37 per cent of respondents in a new Washington Post poll said Ms. Clinton is honest and trustworthy.) The November ballot question will be which one voters fear more and which one they loathe less. Their choice will be the machine politician or the huckster. (By the way, if you think Mr. Trump has no supporters here, you’re wrong. You should see my inbox.)

The other day the Chinese government used Mr. Trump and the threats of violence in Chicago to declare that democracy can be downright scary. The Chinese government has a point. Never in my lifetime has a nominee for president been so clearly unfit for office – not even Mr. Goldwater. America is about to cross a line, and there’s no going back.

Ever since I moved to Canada in the last century, I’ve been insisting that my ex-country is not as crazy as it looks. Ultimately it corrects course. But that’s getting hard to do. It gets hard when you drive around Florida listening to people on the radio calling the President of the United States a traitor. It gets hard when you meet educated professionals who swear that Barack Obama is a foreign-born Muslim. It gets hard when the voice of every conspiracist and wacko is amplified in social media.

I still do not believe Americans are crazy enough to elect Mr. Trump. But I could be wrong. As smart people keep saying on TV, no one knows nothing any more. Even David Plouffe, the mastermind of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, says it could be close. Maybe he’s just hedging, because he doesn’t want to look as stupid as all the other pundits who never saw it coming.

Or maybe I’ll have to eat this column. Mr. Black can pass the salt.

[h=1]Asia watches rise of Donald Trump with trepidation[/h]
Republican front runner Donald Trump may want to build a wall to keep Mexican illegals out, but for Asians, their greatest anxiety over the heated rhetoric coming out of the United States, is that Americans want to build a wall around themselves, whether in matters of trade or security.

An inward-looking US could withdraw some of its support for allies in the region, reverse trade pact gains that have created millions of jobs in Asia, and turn hostile to immigration.

Mr Trump has been the most strident voice against free trade pacts, but even Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, faced with going head to head with him, and sensing the public mood, has questioned a pact she once championed - the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation free trade deal that includes Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.

Mr Trump, the 69-year-old real estate tycoon who has turned his name into a brand and pushed visceral buttons among the electorate, both on the right and left, and especially among the white working class, says the US is being "ripped off".

Repeating an emotive message that has drawn big crowds, he has won primary after primary and is firmly in front to win the Republican Party's nomination - unless factions in his own party, who want to stop him, succeed.

Mr Trump and Mr Sanders' rhetoric has resonated with many Americans, particularly blue-collar workers worried about stagnating wages and losing their jobs as a result of trade deals and immigration.

That same rhetoric is causing alarm bells to ring across Asia. Datuk Seri Nazir Razak, who chairs one of the region's top banks, CIMB, and is Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's brother, posted a picture of Mr Trump on his Instagram account captioning it "The most dangerous man on earth".

The US turning anti-free trade is not good news for countries in the region working hard to free up trade to boost growth.

In 2013, US trade with the 10-member Asean, in goods and services, totalled US$241.7 billion (S$328 billion), the US Department of Trade says on its website. The US imported more from the region, at US$141.2 billion, than it exported to it. With Mr Trump promising to use tariffs and taxes to keep manufacturing jobs in the US, that trade surplus could be threatened.

The TPP for one thing, is supposed to be ratified by the US Congress this year; in the current mood, that outcome is far from certain - and any push back to the next administration would as good as kill it, analysts say.

"If the TPP is not done in this final term (of President Barack Obama), it will never be done," said Professor Simon Tay, chairman of the think-tank Singapore Institute of International Affairs. He said, however, that Mr Trump in his rhetoric "is merely amplifying the voices. And Clinton has had to respond by also questioning the terms of trade".

India's chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian noted recently that Mr Trump's professed aim to implement visa curbs would be "very worrying" for India, whose software companies send thousands of engineers to the US annually.

What worries Asian countries about the backtracking on the trade deal is also what it will do to American influence in the region.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official told national English-language daily The Japan Times: "If both candidates are looking backwards in the trade deal, how can the United States exert political leadership in the region?"

Indeed, the sense among many countries in the region is that the US under a Donald Trump presidency will lose the ground in Asia that it had regained under Mr Obama's pivot to Asia from 2009.

"If Trump wins the presidential race, don't be surprised if some US allies and friends start defecting to revisionist powers such as China, whose leaders would suddenly look less erratic and more reliable than the US'," said Mr Richard Javad Heydarian, a security expert at De La Salle University in the Philippines.

While Mr Trump has not spoken about the conflicts between China and its neighbours, including the Philippines, over the South China Sea, foreign policy analysts said he would likely withdraw the US military from Asia and wreck alliances with South Korea and Japan.

Certainly, Seoul is watching warily to see if Mr Trump will continue bashing South Korea for getting a defence "free ride" and paying "peanuts" for the 28,000 American troops stationed there.

Many have pointed out that Mr Trump's claims are not true. Seoul has a cost-sharing agreement with Washington to pay 920 billion won (S$1.07 billion) a year, which is about 40 per cent of its defence budget, to upkeep the US troops.

Some South Koreans have taken to social media to call him "Trimp", which combines his name and a Korean word for wrong.

Some analysts are worried that a Trump presidency could weaken the US-South Korea alliance and destabilise the Korean Peninsula.

Farther south, in the increasingly uncertain Taiwan Strait, the Taiwanese are asking if a Trump-led US will come to their island's aid if China becomes a threat. But this is balanced against Mr Trump's tough talk on China. "If the US doesn't get along with China, that's fine with us," says Professor Yen Chen-shen, a US expert at the National Chengchi University.

The Chinese themselves, however, are none too worried about Mr Trump's anti-China stance and netizens are saying they find him "frank" and "amusing". Many in China view the vitriol he has whipped up more as an indictment of the US than China, with some believing it is a precursor to American isolationism and downfall.

As for the Chinese government, it says it is not particularly worried about who becomes president. Premier Li Keqiang told journalists last week at a press conference: "We have more than a hundred mechanisms for dialogues and exchanges. If we are sincere in these and manage our differences, I believe we will continue broadening our mutual benefits."

For the rest of Asia, contending with a more assertive China, however, "at a minimum" they "have to be concerned", said Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute for Strategic and International Studies at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

Donald Trump most likely won't win because the majority of voters dislike White people becoming dictators and racists, thanks to white colonial history and facism.

People today, including white liberal leftists, are okay with muslims having extremist views and viewing white women as nothing more than sex toys, but they are not okay with white people saying that muslims are extremists or will not integrate. Hillary will win! Go Hillary!

If Donald Trump wins, I chop!

None of any Republican can beat Hillary Clinton except Mr Donald J Trump.
Donald J Trump will be the next President of United States of America.
He will make American Great again !!!

I hope chee soon juan will get consumed by rage and bitterness knowing that a clown like Trump has won far more local elections this year than Chee will ever win in his entire life time.

if trump wins i will eat nothing but vegetarian and soursop juice for a month.

cruz is trending to beat trump in utah, a state full of docile clueless "evangelical" mormons. for pubs to still trust this fraud and liar and continue to vote for him, many are stumped. but he's the closest to trump in the race, and can be used to steal delegates from trump and force a contested convention, in which a clean slate can produce a new gop establishment nominee. chances of this happening is high as trump still has about 50% to go in terms of winning the minimum delegate count to secure an uncontested nomination. california will loom large come june 1.