by Patrick Hickey | Apr 14, 2016 | Top Story
By Walter C. Jones & Louie Hunter – Michael Reagan, President Ronald Reagan’s son and the former talk-show host, dismissed on Wednesday the political savvy of Donald Trump’s newly promoted convention manager Paul Manafort. In an interview with InsiderAdvantage, Reagan recounted how Manafort was one of the campaign aides in 1980 fired for giving poor advice by the candidate at his son’s recommendation. Ronald Reagan initially planned not to campaign in Iowa but changed his mind after a phone conversation with his son who had been on the ground there and kept running into the other major Republican candidate. “Ronald Reagan flew over the top of Iowa because Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, John Sears and Charlie Black said, ‘You don’t have to land. They love you here. You’ll never have to worry about losing here. You’re their favorite son.’ Mike Reagan picked up the phone and calls his dad and says, ‘You know something, I’m going all over the state of Iowa. I’m chasing George H.W. Bush. He’s here. You’re not. You’re going to get beat.'” He did get beat. Bush won, although by a slight margin. And he then won the Puerto Rico primary that Reagan skipped to spend more time in New Hampshire, letting Bush brag of the momentum he called “the Big Mo.” Michael Reagan recalled how he received an early morning call the day of the New Hampshire primary from his father announcing that he planned to fire Manafort, Sears, Stone and Black. Reagan noted that Trump announced last week that he had promoted Manafort to head up his campaign’s effort to wrangle delegates at the...
by Hastings Wyman | Mar 28, 2016 | Top Story
By Hastings Wyman – Donald Trump recently met with a group of Washington, DC Republicans in what was touted, by Trump and the media, as the beginning of a rapprochement between Trump and “the GOP establishment.” The group of about two dozen, invited by Trump supporter US Sen. Jeff Sessions (AL), included a number of Southerners, among them US Sen. Tom Cotton (AR), US Reps. Scott DesJarlais (TN) and Renee Ellmers (NC), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (GA), former House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston (LA), and Heritage Foundation president and former US Sen. Jim DeMint (SC). Others present included US Reps. Chris Collins (NY), Duncan Hunter (CA) and Tom Marino (PA). Most of those in attendance had endorsed Trump. Cotton had not and remains uncommitted. Gingrich told reporters that he had known Trump for years and often gave him advice, though he has not formally endorsed the New York billionaire. Livingston, now a Washington lobbyist, said after the meeting that he had voted for someone else in the primary, but was now endorsing Trump. Livingston said that the stop-Trump plans “are insulting to me and insulting to the process, and that’s why I’m getting involved,” reported the Times-Picayune. The meeting, we have it on good authority, was cordial, and Trump went around the room asking for advice from everybody, putting him in the unusual position, at least publicly, of seeking advice from “politicians,” a category he has derided and sought to separate himself from. Nevertheless, everyone gave him their in-put, “some positive, some negative,” says SPR’s source, who was not present but was privy to what went on....
