July 30, 2015

Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said they have specific policy positions ready for release at a time and method of the campaign’s choosing, BuzzFeed reports.

Said Lewandowski: “Candidly? They’re all done. They’re done and we’re waiting for our schedule and we won’t be dictated to by the mainstream media to tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing and how these positions should be put out front.”

Wall Street Journal: “According to Facebook, Mr. Trump is easily the most-talked candidate of the 2016 election — and it’s been that way ever since he announced he was running for the White House on June 16. In the past 30 days, Mr. Trump has dominated the conversation so heavily on the social network, that no other candidate has come close to reaching him, even for a day.”

Matt Bai: “Trump himself doesn’t worry me. That’s because I don’t think for a moment that he wants the job. What Trump wants — craves, actually — is relevance. The man has a clinical phobia of obsolescence. He puts his name on every building he owns just to make sure people will have to speak it out loud.”

“He has no plan for actual governance and no ambition to actually govern. It’s possible that his daily barrage of insults and diatribes, each more outrageous than the last, is really a kind of self-sabotage, as if he’s trying to figure out how awful he can be before the show starts to lose viewers. Even if Trump managed to get the nomination (which he won’t), the broader electorate would recoil at the things he says, and he’s probably counting on it.”

“What does worry me is that Trump really is a proven visionary. He’s brilliant at seeing the next ego-leveraging opportunity. He’s the first interloping network star to jolt a presidential race, but no way is he the last… What Trump is doing, and it’s a twisted kind of public service, is showing all of us how easy it is now to successfully manipulate a media in economic distress and a presidential process that caters, more and more, to an ever-dwindling bloc of extremists on either side.”

New York Times: “The most pressing question that Donald Trump could face next week in the first debate of the 2016 presidential race may not be about Iran or immigration, but this: Can he deploy enough adjectives (‘huge!’), superlatives (‘the worst!’) and invectives (‘loser!’) for him to use up his time without being challenged successfully on the substance of policy?”

“Mr. Trump could come away a winner if he makes cogent points without sounding too hostile, presenting himself as more of a serious-minded, anti-establishment voice in a primary crowded with career Republican politicians. But there are risks for him if he turns the debate stage in Cleveland into another episode of the reality show his campaign has sometimes resembled.”

Wonk Wire: Who are Trump supporters? Uneducated whites.