Donald J. Trump, the real estate mogul who has tied Republicans in knots in recent weeks with his comments on immigration, will roll into Phoenix on Saturday to address the issue again, just after the head of the Republican Party supposedly asked him to tone down his words on the issue.

The planned speech is already attracting a storm of attention. Even as city leaders have asked Mr. Trump “to stage his hate-filled circus” elsewhere, ticket requests have been so high the campaign has moved the speech from the swank Arizona Biltmore hotel to the convention center downtown…

Republicans will be watching the weekend swing through the desert closely to see if Mr. Trump tempers his language on the issue.

“I believe that Mr. Trump is kind of telling it like it really, truly is,” Republican Jan Brewer told CNN’s Don Lemon Wednesday night. “You know, being the governor of (Arizona), the gateway of illegal immigration for six years, we had to deal with a lot of things.

“I think that the people of Arizona realize that we picked up the tab for the majority of the violence that comes across to our border with regards to the drug cartels, the smugglers, the drop houses. It has been horrendous. And, of course, they come through Arizona and therefore, end up in other states and go throughout the country.”

Trump is supposed to be the narcissist blowhard celebrity candidate: He’s a guy famous for erecting aesthetically revolting buildings with his “brand” plastered all over them, for arm-candy brides, for beauty contests and reality shows. The other fellows are sober, serious senators and governors.

And yet Trump is the only one who’s introduced an issue into this otherwise torpid campaign – and the most important issue of all, I would argue, in that ultimately it’s one of national survival. And so the same media that dismiss Trump as an empty reality-show vanity candidate is now denouncing him for bringing up the only real policy question in the race so far.

What he said may or may not be offensive, but it happens to be true: America has more Mexicans than anybody needs, and then some. It certainly has more unskilled Mexicans than any country needs, including countries whose names begin with “Mex-” and end in “-ico”. And it has far more criminal Mexicans than anybody needs, which is why they make up 71 per cent of the foreign inmates in federal jails…

As Ann Coulter’s new book Adios, America! lays out in remorseless detail, Kate Steinle is dead because the entire Democratic Party, two-thirds of the Republican Party and 100 per cent of the diseased federal-state-municipal bureaucracy prioritizes myths over reality. Yes, it’s distressing to persons of taste and discrimination that the only person willing to address that reality is Donald Trump. But that’s because he’s not the reality-show freak here. The fake-o lame-o reality freakshow is the political pseudo-campaign being waged within the restraints demanded by the media and Macy’s. So, if Donald Trump is the only guy willing to bust beyond those bounds, we owe him a debt of gratitude.

[C]uriously, Trump has been very sparing in his criticism of Hillary Clinton. His most pointed jab came only this week after Clinton attacked his immigration comments. Trump responded the next day by calling her “the worst secretary of state in the history of our nation. Why would she be a good president? I think she would be a terrible president.”

But for many years Trump has been far more positive about Clinton. Hillary Clinton attended Trump’s 2005 wedding (and her husband Bill attended the wedding reception), and he has showered her Senate campaigns with contributions on four separate occasions. In 2012, after Clinton had been secretary of state for over three years, he told Fox News that she was a “terrific woman.”…

[E]vents have unfolded to make a Trump third-party bid — which would probably allow Hillary Clinton to repeat Bill’s feat of winning the presidency with a minority of the vote — only more likely. Despite their recent sparring session, I suspect that Trump and his businesses could survive a Hillary Clinton presidency quite nicely.

Trump is different from Bachmann, and even from fellow entrepreneur Cain, in one major respect: He doesn’t give a crap about the Republican Party. He cares about Trump. And don’t forget he has the power singlehandedly to make Hillary Clinton president. He knows it, and you better believe Priebus knows it, and it is this fact that establishes a power dynamic between Trump and the GOP in which Trump totally has the upper hand and can make mischief in the party for months.

How does he have the power to elect Clinton all by himself? By running as an independent. Two factors usually prevent candidates who lose nominations from running as independents. One, they lack the enormous amount of money needed to pursue that path (pay the lawyers to get them on 50 state ballots, etc.). Two, they have a sense of proportion and decency, and they figure that if primary voters rejected them, it’s time to go home.

Well, Trump has the dough and lacks the decency.

While Republican Party mandarins wring their hands over Donald Trump’s presidential bid, the celebrity real estate mogul’s untethered political approach may actually be buoying Jeb Bush, the target of his most frequent attacks, and making the former Florida governor’s moderate approach to immigration more palatable in the process…

“Donald Trump is colorful, but Bush is trying to think of a solution,” Valerie Morelli, a 69-year-old from Amherst said when asked why she was impressed with Bush’s performance. “One thing I wish is that he (Bush) would still build a wall, even though he said there’s other way to do it.”

“I was impressed,” said Ed Gorman, a 66-year-old from Londonderry who has concerns about illegal immigration. “He’s the first candidate that I’ve heard actually say that we have a situation with illegal immigrants, that if you’re not going to deport them wholesale, you’ve got to deal with them here. And it sounded like he’s going to do that.”

[W]hat Donald Trump has come to represent over the past few weeks is not just his typical bombast and bluster but what some critics have decried as blatant racism. And there’s growing concern among Republicans that Trump’s outsized profile could cause real damage, not only to the GOP’s 2016 hopes, but to the party’s chances of defending a fragile majority in the Senate as well…

Democrats need to net only four or five seats to take back the upper chamber, depending on which party wins the White House, and they’re eyeing Latino-heavy states like Florida and Illinois as prime pickup opportunities. They also see Latino voters as potentially creating a firewall of support for their candidates in two of the GOP’s few opportunities to play offense: Nevada and Colorado. Latino voters make up anywhere from nearly 10 percent in Illinois, to 17 percent, in Florida, of the state’s eligible voters, and could prove decisive in a tough race…

“The rate of turnout [among Latinos] often fluctuates and is very responsive to the political environment. If this immigration issue, the Trump issue, which has frankly also been suggested by other Republicans — that will serve to really create a lot of anger and frustration in the Latino community,” he said.

They think he’s real, that he’s under nobody’s thumb, that maybe he’s a big-mouth but he’s a truth-teller. He’s afraid of no one, he’s not politically correct. He’s rich and can’t be bought by some billionaire, because he is the billionaire. He’s talking about what people are thinking and don’t feel free to say. He can turn the economy around because he made a lot of money, so he probably knows how to make jobs.

He is a fighter. People want a fighter. Maybe he’s impolitic but he’s better than some guy who filters everything he says through a screen of political calculation…

Mr. Trump is not a serious man, which is part of his appeal in a country that has grown increasingly unserious.

He’s a showman in a country that likes to watch shows—a country that believes all politics is showbiz now, and all politicians are entertainers of varying degrees of competence. At least Mr. Trump is honest about it.

He capitalizes on the fact that no one in America trusts politicians anymore.

This has nothing to do with political solutions and everything to do with entertainment factor; this is the culture we as a people chose when we went to the voting booth in November of 2008. We decided showmanship, stage-fainting, snake oil and promises of ocean level decreases were more important than substantive policy ideas and solutions. We elected a President based on what Hollywood studios and corporate branding experts told us, and those same people haven’t stopped giving us their opinion in the form of tweets or slogans written on hands ever since. Conservatives, desperate to join a culture that has all but decided to pass them by (or force them out completely), aren’t so much looking for an articulate salesman to get them back in the conversation as they are looking for an indestructible tank to bust through the wall and take it instantly by force…

Americans are addicted to the show, and Conservatives, as much as they relentlessly deny it, are arguably more so.  We exist almost completely in a world whose contours are shaped by–and at the mercy of–leftist talking points, and are beaten repeatedly over the head with them. Little wonder then, that when a snake-oil salesman of our own comes along, saying the things we want to hear, it’s like sweet endorphines are being released into a media saturated hemisphere.  (That Trump has–as recently as 2008–been on the record endorsing such progressive dreams as single-payer healthcare, maximized corporate taxation, and First Female President Hillary Clinton is, frankly, irrelevant; his fans weren’t reasoned into their support for him in the first place, so you’re not going to reason them of out of it by pointing out that his only true political conviction seems to be Whatever Is Good For Donald Trump.)  Conservative pundits and talk show hosts are just as eager to catch Donald Trump in a blustery gaffe as their liberal counterparts. This is what establishment conservative media either doesn’t understand (or does understand and is just rolling with the joke). The promises Trump is making about walls, China, Iran and Mexico are at their core no different than the type of free-shit promises Barack Obama makes to his base. But the entertainment wing of the Right is going to allow it, for now, because it offers at least a pale simulacrum of what Obama offered to his loving throngs of admirers. That’s how desperate for cultural relevance we are…

Our media is demanding coliseum-style entertainment and they will flock to the showmen that are willing to give it to them. Barack Obama is more than happy to appease them. Someone needs to fill that void when he leaves office and Trump believes it to be him. Conservative critics of Trump who drop their money at conferences or tune into his television show need to realize that they are part of the show as well. As long as we’re willing to abide a circus of politainment, there will always be someone auditioning to be the ringmaster. Right now that ringmaster is Donald Trump.

And the circus isn’t leaving town any time soon.

I suspect many people will vote for Trump for the same reason many people voted for Britain’s second most famous blonde bombshell, Boris Johnson: they’ll do it for a laugh and to stick it to the perpetually offended. Candidates with genuine personality are so rare that you want to keep them on the field even if you mostly disagree with them. That’s what politicians and many journalists simply don’t get…

He will also, by poking, prodding, provoking and posturing, reveal through his performance some great truths. He’s right on immigration. He’s right about America needing positive leadership. He’s right about a lot of things, and by creating a gigantic platform from which to bluster and rant, he nudges everyone who watches him just a little bit further in his direction…

Some people will claim that Trump getting involved in the Republican primaries lowers the tone of this noble process. Good. He’s treating it with the dignity it deserves, which is to say: none. Noble process? Give me a break. Primaries are a pack of morons hacking their own political allies to death and repeating ridiculous and largely fictitious stories about their childhoods for the amusement of late-night comedians.

Sorry, no offence, but it’s true. If you’re going to turn your presidential selection process into a reality show, don’t be surprised when reality stars show up demanding to take part. If you build it, Trump will come. Then he’ll build it again, eleven stories higher, and put his name on it in gold lettering.

Via the Free Beacon.