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For George Papadopoulos, the path to politics—and to President Donald Trump —was a circuitous one. The former Trump aide, who pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russians during the election campaign, entered the political world in 2015 with no campaign experience and little foreign policy background. A onetime oil and gas consultant who then served as a research associate at the conservative Hudson Institute and touted his Model United Nations experience as a credential, Mr. Papadopoulos began the 2016 presidential campaign by working for Republican Ben Carson. He was...

What do Glenn Beck, Carly Fiorina, S.E. Cupp, Dana Perino, Zac Moffett (Romney Campaign), and Arther Brooks have in common? They are all avowed members of the Never Trump coalition.  And according to recent media reports, they are also the names scheduled to meet with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to discuss Facebook’s ideological censorship of political views. […] “I want to have a direct conversation about what Facebook stands for and how we can be sure our platform stays as open as possible,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post last week. “The reason I care so much about this is that it...

Anti-Islamist politician Geert Wilders will fly to Cleveland convention to support Donald Trump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders>Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician and the founder and leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom. Wilders is an anti-Islamist leader in Europe. Since 2004 he received permanent personal security for speaking out against Islamic fundamentalism. Geert will be in Cleveland. The Trump campaign plans on “juicing up” this year’s convention. Bloomberg spoke with Trump senior advisor Barry Bennett on Friday. “Our team will be headed out [to Cleveland] next week or the week after to get our first kind of update of what’s going on....

For years, the US government has been able to finance it's debt at cheap interest rates because there have always been plenty of enthusiastic buyers. As long as the Chinese, the Japanese, and others continue to hold and buy large amounts.. ....then the US government would have to entice them and others to take on the debt by promising to pay a higher interest rate on it. In turn, this would require more spending on debt service by Congress. If this should ever happen, it would require significant cuts to government programs — or tax increases, or both — in...

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets.

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets. Over the course of the discussion, the candidate made clear that he would govern in the same nontraditional way that he has campaigned,...

Fact Checker Trump’s Nonsensical Claim He Can Eliminate $19 Trillion In Debt In Eight Years Donald Trump, in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa In a revealing interview, Trump predicts a ‘massive recession’ but intends to eliminate the national debt in 8 years By Glenn Kessler April 2 The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa sat down with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Here's how the interview went. Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” Bob Woodward: “How long would that take?” Trump: “I think I could do it fairly quickly,...

"I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble... We’re not at 5 percent unemployment. We’re at a number that’s probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. That was a number that was devised, statistically devised to make politicians – and in particular presidents – look good. And I wouldn’t be getting the kind of massive crowds that I’m getting if the number was a real number." "I’m talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession. Look, we have money...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told the New York Times he would consider stopping U.S. oil purchases from Saudi Arabia unless the Saudi government provide troops to fight Islamic State. Trump’s comment on Friday was included in a lengthy foreign policy interview published by the newspaper on Saturday and came in response to a question about whether, if elected president, he would halt oil purchases from U.S. allies unless they provided on-the-ground forces against Islamic State. “The answer is, probably yes,” Trump said, according to a transcript. Trump has said the United States should be reimbursed by the countries it...

As president, Donald Trump would sell off $16 trillion worth of U.S. government assets in order to fulfill his pledge to eliminate the national debt in eight years, senior adviser with the campaign Barry Bennett said. "The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else," Bennett told Chris Jansing Sunday on MSNBC. "We can get rid of government buildings we're not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold." In a...

PELLA, Iowa - Amid tanking poll numbers and a campaign shake-up, supporters swarmed three Ben Carson events on an icy Wednesday in Iowa, suggesting that the retired-pediatric-neurosurgeon-turned-Republican-presidential-candidate may still have what it takes to do well in the state's kingmaker caucuses. More than 150 supporters showed up in Panora, a small town of just 1,100, and so many supporters gathered at a small Winterset cafe that Carson gave a second, shorter town hall for those who couldn't fit in the room for the scheduled event. More than 350 attended an event in Pella on Wednesday evening, filling dozens of seats...

Barry Bennett, who resigned his role as campaign manager for Ben Carson a few days ago, just issued a somewhat shocking prediction on the winner of the Republican Party presidential primary - and it's not his former employer, but rather Donald Trump. "All you've got to do is compare the size of everyone's rallies," he said, during an interview with CNN. "Donald Trump is having ten-, twelve-thousand people show up at rallies, and a lot of these guys are having five or six people show up at their events in Iowa." Bennett said "unless something cataclysmic happens," Trump was slated...

WASHINGTON -- No one is going to beat Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, Ben Carson's former campaign manager said Wednesday. "He's got the support out there right now, and unless something cataclysmic happens, he's going to win," Barry Bennett, who recently resigned from the Carson team, told CNN. "At this point, it's getting harder and harder to see how Donald Trump is not our nominee," added Bennett, who refused to say his former boss was the best candidate at this point. "In the end, people have decided to go with loud. So we've got to get used to...

U.S. Republican Ben Carson's 2016 presidential bid was thrown into chaos on Thursday when his campaign manager and some 20 other staff members quit amid infighting, dropping poll numbers and negative media coverage. Barry Bennett, who oversaw Carson's rapid rise to the top tier of Republican contenders and his later fall, said he quit over differences with another top adviser to Carson, Armstrong Williams. Specifically, Bennett blamed Williams for an interview Carson gave last week to The Washington Post suggesting that the campaign was in disarray. "It's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen a candidate do," Bennett said....