Morning Joe Recap Today: Good morning everyone! Happy Tuesday to you!

Joining today's show are John Heilemann, Nicholas Confessore, Eugene Robinson, Amy Holmes, Mike Allen, Hugh Hewitt, Robert Costa, Joe Klein, Jeff Daniels, Comm. Bill Bratton, Janet Langhart Cohen, Sen. Mark Warner, Bianna Golodryga, Brian Sullivan, Bobby Flay and more...

There were no killing or capturing of any Dolphins today on Day 49 of those hunts in Taji, Japan and crazy enough, I started to watch the first few Star War's films which in essence were the last few that were released into the theatres. I watched the third one last night which is when the young Skywalker becomes darth Vadar. I am psyched now to re watch the three that i had seen growing up and I am officially caught up with the Star Wars stories and films. The show has just shown the trailer for the newest one coming out this Christmas. That will be done by J.J. Abrahms.


New Polls came out at like 6PM or 7PM last night:
Donald trump's numbers actually rose. Him and Dr. Ben Carson have almost 50% of the GOP votes or whatever it is called when you poll people. I really cannot believe how much Jeb Bush is responding to Donald Trump's comments about his brother (George Bush Jr.). Someone needs to tell him to NOT respond to it. He is so far under his skin and no they are back to debating something that went down 15 years ago. It is a mind blowing brilliant move by the Trump camp. Jeb spent the entire day yesterday defending his brother but in reality, George Bush Jr. did keep the country safe for the most part, after 9/12/2001. Not beforehand and he needs to accept it. That GOP is very linear in their thought processes to make points and to remember things. They talk about everything vehemently right up to the very second it affects them. It is not just the Bush's. The entire GOP acts that way.

Carly (Fiorina) BTW, dropped or lost 4 points since her rise after the last GOP debate. I assume that her lies caught up to her because they were bad lies. They were short sited lies that could be disproved with ease and even by way of the Planned Parenthood hearings. I said that her lies would come to the surface later on during or towards the end of the primary race and that she could do it now without people figuring it out. But, I was wrong. It was disproved days after and her poll numbers show it.


Evidently too, Trump wrote about terror threat before 9/11. Donald Trump wrote about a large-scale terror attack in the U.S. in his 2000 book 'The America We Deserve.' BuzzFeed recently dug up the passage, and the Morning Joe panel discusses.

But then again, I wrote and put out so many things way before it happened and got to the mainstream. I never get credit for it. As a matter of fact, I say that being the first to say things has a weird dichotomy because at first, everyone looks at you like a kook or a freak for saying it. Then, when it becomes mainstream news or part of society, no one remembers  it started with you.


Poll: Trump Hits Highest Mark Yet, But Carson Is Close Behind. Real estate mogul Donald Trump remains the front-runner in the Republican presidential field, while former neurosurgeon Ben Carson holds a close second place, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows.


With the backing of 25 percent of Republican primary voters, Trump is at his highest level of support in the poll since entering the 2016 race. Carson now gets the support of 22 percent of Republican voters, remaining within the margin of error of his first-place rival. Last month, 21 percent of GOP primary voters said Trump was their first choice for the party's nomination, while 20 percent picked Carson.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is in third place, getting support from 13 percent of GOP voters, while Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas (at 9 percent, up four points since last month ) and Jeb Bush (at 8 percent, up one point since last month) are in fourth and fifth place, respectively.

The new poll, which surveyed respondents from Oct. 15 to Sunday, saw a slight dip in support for former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina, who fell from 11 percent last month to 7 percent this month. Fiorina won a boost late this summer from strong performances in the two televised Republican debates.

Receiving support in the low single digits in the poll are former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (3 percent), Ohio Gov. John Kasich (3 percent), Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky (2 percent) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (1 percent).

Five candidates still in the race — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, former New York Gov. George Pataki, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore — registered less than 1 percent support.

Carson's upside potential

While Trump leads when GOP primary voters are asked about their first choice for the party's nomination, Carson boasts the highest share of voters who say they can see themselves supporting him. Seventy-four percent said that they can imagine backing Carson for the GOP nod, while just 20 percent said they could not.

But Trump has also gained ground when it comes to whether or not potential voters can picture themselves backing him. Fifty-nine percent of GOP voters now say they can see themselves supporting Trump, while 36 percent disagree. Just last month, a slight majority — 52 percent — said they could not see themselves backing the real estate mogul, while 47 could envision it.

Rubio (65 percent could support/26 percent could not support) and Fiorina (56 could support/30 percent could not support) also show significant possible upsides among GOP voters.

The gap is narrower for Bush (51 percent could support/44 percent could not support) and Cruz (48 percent could support/41 percent could not support.)

When asked which candidate would be their second choice, GOP respondents tended to choose Carson, followed by Trump and Rubio. That tally means that, when GOP primary voters' first and second choices are combined, the former neurosurgeon manages to best Trump, 44 percent to 39 percent.

Carson runs strongest among very conservative Republicans, with 28 percent of that group's support, while Trump leads among those who say they are moderate or liberal (31 percent). Trump also leads among GOP primary voters who listen to talk radio (33 percent to Carson's 22 percent) and those who describe themselves as Tea Party supporters (28 percent to Carson's 22 percent).

The NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll was conducted Oct. 15 to 18. The margin of error for 400 Republican primary voters is +/- 4.9 percent.

Let's talk about Dr. Ben Carson. First, his Pro-Gun Argument is Blasted.

Nicholas Da Silva, a Journalism major, is in his second year as a columnist for The Montclarion.
GOP candidate Ben Carson has been heavily criticized this past week over some bone-headed statements he made in an attempt to justify pro-gun advocacy. In Carson’s new book, A More Perfect Union, the retired neurosurgeon stated that many lives could have been saved during the Holocaust if there had been more guns in Nazi-occupied countries.

“Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance,” Carson wrote in his book.
On Oct. 8, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Carson and asked the presidential hopeful if he really believed that less gun laws would have prevented 6 million people from dying at the hands of the Nazis.

Carson reiterated his argument to Blitzer. “The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” Carson claimed. “I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first.”

The Anti-Defamation League responded by stating that, while Carson has the right to his opinion, his comments were insensitive and historically inaccurate. The ADL also mentioned that the amount of guns available for individuals in Nazi-occupied Germany were nowhere near enough to defeat the Nazi regime.

In fact, there were Jewish resistance forces from the Warsaw ghetto that fought the Nazis throughout 1943. The primary weapon that members of these resistance forces used were guns. The Jewish resistance forces killed about 20 Nazis, but were overpowered by the immense numbers of the Nazi regime. The end result of this resistance was the deaths of 13,000 Jews and the deportation of many others to concentration camps.

Carson’s comments not only come off as ignorant, but incredibly untimely. Given that over the span of one week there have been mass shootings at colleges in Oregon, Arizona and Texas, the least appropriate thing for someone to say is that a lack of guns is preventing lives from being saved.

Yet, Carson’s viewpoints on gun control and the Holocaust go hand-in-hand with comments he made on Fox News on Oct. 6, when he discussed how he would have taken action against the gunman in the Oregon college shooting.

“Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me,” Carson said. “I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.’”

The statement left Matthew Downing, an 18-year-old survivor of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Roseburg, Ore., deeply offended. Downing was the student the gunman allowed to live, even being referred to by the shooter as “the lucky one.”

Downing was forced by the gunman to go to the back of the classroom and watch several of his classmates being gunned down one after another.

“I’m fairly upset he said that,” Downing told CNN via Facebook. “Nobody could truly understand what actions they would take like that in a situation unless they lived it.”

Simply put, Downing’s argument has a more solid foundation than Carson’s does. Many people say that they would be brave in a dangerous situation. However, when actually held at gunpoint, few people act as they claim they would.

Fear is so powerful that it can override someone’s ability to think critically during a dangerous situation. Some people are so afraid for their lives that they simply freeze and take no action at all. Carson has elaborated on his controversial statement by saying he was “not judging the shooting victims at all.”

If someone wants to make an argument about improving self-defense for American citizens, they need to have an intelligent, tasteful argument before opening their mouth and saying something stupid. Unfortunately though, this is not the case with politicians in the United States who have an agenda they want to push.

Politicians like Carson are so determined to get people to believe in their cause that they become narrow-sighted. Respect, decency and common sense are thrown out the window because it is more important to get someone to agree with their point of view.

Incredible acts of violence, like the Holocaust or the Oregon college shootings, should not be used to manipulate people. Manipulating the masses to support a certain cause always leads to more anger and ignorance. Playing with someone’s emotions is not as effective in the long run as presenting them with a compelling, fact-based argument. The day politicians realize this is the day they will stop shooting themselves square in the foot.

Next, Peter Wehner from the The New York Times wrote today about why Ben Carson’s Nazi Analogies Matter. because of course it matters. LIKE many other political autodidacts, Ben Carson has an odd obsession with Nazi Germany.


On several occasions, the pediatric-neurosurgeon-turned-Republican-presidential-candidate has compared the United States to the Third Reich. Mr. Carson has warned that a Hitler-like figure could rise in America. To understand what is happening in the Obama era, he recommended that people read “Mein Kampf.” And he won’t let go of the myth that the Holocaust would have been “greatly diminished” if Jews in Nazi Germany had been allowed to possess guns.

To declare the United States to be “very much like Nazi Germany” is a special kind of libel, yet Mr. Carson is clearly drawn to it. Part of the explanation may be that people who want to impress sometimes invoke imbecilic historical analogies, with the default one often being Nazi Germany. Some part of the answer has to do with his staggering ignorance when it comes to the unique malevolence of Hitler’s Germany. And for still others, it’s a way to convey alarm and mobilize supporters. In the case of Mr. Carson, it also appears to be based on the belief that progressive ideas share intellectual roots with fascism, with Nazism — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — being an extreme version of progressivism.

One might expect a fringe presidential candidate to resort to the Nazi analogy. But what is disturbing is that in this case the person making the comparison is polling second in the Republican race for president. In the most recent Fox News national poll, Donald J. Trump drew 24 percent support while Mr. Carson had 23 percent. Between them, then, they are pulling in just under half of the support among Republicans.

In one respect, Mr. Carson is the antithesis of the crude and boisterous Mr. Trump. In tone and style, Mr. Carson comes across as calm, reasonable and agreeable. But in fact he is more rhetorically intemperate than even Mr. Trump.

For example, Mr. Carson has referred to the Affordable Care Act as “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery” and compared it to slavery. He has implied that President Obama’s pledge to transform America was modeled after Cuba, Russia and other “places that have a Socialist/Communist base.”

Mr. Carson had expressed concern that if Republicans didn’t win control of the Senate in 2014, “there may be so much anarchy going on” that the 2016 elections couldn’t be held. He has endorsed the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a conspiracy-minded author and supporter of the John Birch Society. (Mr. Carson views Mr. Skousen’s work, especially “The Naked Communist,” as an interpretive key to America today.) He has also said that a Muslim should not be president of the United States, although he later insisted he had in mind Muslims who wanted to impose Shariah law on America.

Such rhetorical recklessness damages our political culture as well as conservatism, a philosophy that should be grounded in prudence, moderation and self-restraint. That doesn’t mean that conservatives should not use language that inspires people to act. But they should respect certain rhetorical boundaries. There are some places they shouldn’t go.

Mr. Carson doesn’t abide by such niceties, and he may be accurately gauging the mood of many Republicans. The Times reports that advisers who once fretted about his inflammatory rhetoric have now decided to “let Carson be Carson.” Mr. Carson has said that the message he’s receiving from supporters is, “Don’t stop. Don’t give in to the left-wing media. Go ahead and be yourself and talk about what we the people want to hear about.”

We hear similar expressions from supporters of Mr. Trump. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Carson provide evidence that, for now at least, a large percentage of Republican voters are in a fiercely anti-political mood. As a result, the usual ways voters judge a candidate — experience, governing achievements, mastery of issues — have been devalued. People are looking for candidates not only to give voice to their anger but to amplify it. Reason has given way to demagogy. In a political context, Mr. Trump and Mr. Carson represent the id rather than the superego, not just in what they say but in how they perceive the world around them.

For the Republican Party to overcome this will require its presidential candidates to inspire voters to believe in the large purposes of politics. But it will also require Republican voters to lift their sights and raise their expectations about the goals of politics, which are to improve the lives of our fellow citizens in concrete ways; to advance, even imperfectly, liberty, opportunity and a more decent and just society.

Self-government requires more of people than pounding sand. There is vital work that needs to be done, including addressing sluggish economic growth, a widening opportunity gap and an unsustainable entitlement system. Because these things are hard doesn’t mean we can give up, and we certainly don’t need conspiracy-minded amateurs like Mr. Carson and Mr. Trump distracting our attention from them.

Politics isn’t meant to be a catharsis. Yet for many of my fellow conservatives, raging against the system — the much-maligned “establishment” — is just that. I get that it may be emotionally satisfying to cheer on careless rhetoric, to portray every political difference as a “give me liberty or give me death” moment, and to imply that America under Barack Obama is like Germany under Adolf Hitler. But it is also intellectually discrediting, politically self-defeating and unworthy of those who are citizens of a great republic.

On the Joe Biden front, last night WaPo accidentally publishes Biden candidacy story, abruptly yanks. Report says Biden ready, paper: ‘This file was inadvertently published’.
Biden Joe -
Embarrassed Washington Post editors were left scrambling earlier today after a story was accidentally published that declared Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy.

With “XXX” showing in certain areas where details were yet to be added, it’s clear the piece was meant to remain in draft mode. But somebody with a fat finger hit the wrong button. Before the story could be removed, the Republican National Committee grabbed and sent the copy to those on its “War Room” mailing list.

Once the error was discovered, it was replaced with an editor’s note reading “This file was inadvertently published.”
Here’s how it looked before it was removed:

Biden to launch a presidential campaign

Washington Post
Paul Kane
October 19, 2015

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-to-launch-a-presidential-campaign/2015/10/19/02924e34-6d7b-11e5-9bfe-e59f5e244f92_story.html

Vice President Biden plans to enter the contest for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, ending months of speculation about his intentions and delivering a jolt to an already unpredictable contest, according to XXX sources familiar with his decision.

Biden, who has been publicly grieving since the death of his eldest son on May 30, began telling associates on XX of his intention to launch a late-breaking campaign that will pit him against a pair of Democrats who have been well ahead of his decision-making process, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

A formal announcement could come within the next week, just in time to allow the vice president to appear at a critical party event Oct. 24 in Iowa. The three-way race among Democrats sets up a debate over which candidate is the rightful heir to President Obama’s legacy and whether the party needs a sharp break — as Sanders contends — from the policies of both Obama and former president Bill Clinton.
Biden’s entry into the contest comes after several months of declining popularity for Hillary Clinton, during which she has been dogged by an FBI investigation of the security of the private e-mail server she used during her time as Obama’s secretary of state. The controversy helped prompt a rise in Sanders’s standing from iconoclastic liberal to a more fearsome insurgent.

But Biden’s decision also arrives just days after what many consider Clinton’s best campaign moment so far: a commanding performance at the Oct. 13 debate in Las Vegas that left many party insiders suggesting the vice president’s path to victory no longer seemed plausible.

More: Was Biden running all along?Biden Joe thumbs
His public consideration of the race was originally dismissed by many Washington insiders as a mechanism to help cope with the death of his son Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general. It evolved into the plausible candidacy of an elder statesman whom some establishment figures pushed to run to provide another option than Clinton.

Although Biden faces an uphill challenge to craft a credible national campaign, his story of overcoming repeated tragedy in his family will serve as the unspoken theme of a campaign.
“No one owes you anything. You gotta get up,” Biden said in mid-September on CBS’s “Late Show.” Despite his repeated expression of emotional pain, Biden lit a fire under the movement to bring him into the 2016 race.

“I feel like I was letting down Beau, letting down my parents, letting down my family if I didn’t just get up,” Biden told host Stephen Colbert.

The vice president remains far behind Clinton in national polling, and trails Sanders in some surveys. He has virtually no campaign infrastructure.

His inner circle of advisers helped him make the decision without the benefit of any of their own polling, focus groups or other standard practices of modern campaigns. As of last week, Biden’s team had not even opened a bank account for campaign donations, said two party strategists who offered advice during the decision-making process.

By contrast, Clinton’s campaign has already raised $75 million, and has paid staff members in dozens of states. Over the three-month fundraising period that ended Sept. 30, Sanders pulled in $26 million, a large portion of it in small donations from liberal activists donating over the Internet, many of whom seem poised to continue pouring money into his bid.

More than 50 donors with a history of raising big money have pledged to support Biden’s bid via the Draft Biden super PAC. Some insiders have suggested that the vice president’s team could amass $30 million over the next four months, which might be enough to be competitive in the first four contests.

Recent history suggests that candidates who win their party’s presidential nomination are those who have prepared the longest, raised the most money and then run the most disciplined campaigns. Other recent late-entry candidates — former Texas governor Rick Perry and former Tennessee senator Fred D. Thompson in the 2012 and 2008 GOP contests, respectively, and Wesley Clark in the 2004 Democratic campaign — have all flamed out, in part because of their lack of preparation for the rough-and-tumble nature of a presidential bid.

Many campaign veterans worry that Biden will face a similar fate, with some former colleagues concerned that his public image will take a hit, shifting from that of a sympathetic grieving father to that of a typical presidential hopeful.
“I’ve watched you all suck people into races and then shred them,” Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), a Clinton supporter who considers Biden a friend, recently told reporters.
But the 2016 contest has defied many standard expectations, and Biden’s team is placing a big bet that he can capture this moment and ride the wave to the Oval Office.

Large blocs of voters in each party have shunned insider establishment candidates, searching for non-traditional political leaders with voices that ring authentic. The Republican field is currently led by a trio of candidates who never held political office, with real estate mogul Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at the head of the pack, with former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina in the top tier. Sanders, a socialist who has never before run for office as a Democrat, has surged into contention in Iowa and New Hampshire — grabbing the lead in many surveys — on the basis of a campaign focused on attacking the billionaire class and its hold on power in Washington.

Enter Biden, 72, a veteran of inside-the-Beltway politics, with his 36 years in the Senate and tenure as Obama’s lieutenant. His advisers think he has the right biography to navigate the current political environment, particularly as a contrast to Clinton.

Born in Scranton, Pa., and raised outside Wilmington, Del., Biden’s appeal has always been that of a middle-class guy. In a letter Thursday to current and former staff, one of Biden’s longest-serving adviser told the alumni network that a 2016 campaign would be focused on how “to restore the ability of the middle class to get ahead.”

“An optimistic campaign. A campaign from the heart,” wrote Ted Kaufman, Biden’s ex-chief of staff, who for two years served as his successor in the Senate. “A campaign consistent with his values, our values, and the values of the American people. And I think it’s fair to say, knowing him as we all do, that it won’t be a scripted affair — after all, it’s Joe.”
That last line suggested how Biden’s team intends to turn his tendency to say the right thing at the wrong time — or sometimes the wrong thing at the wrong time — into a political selling point that underscores his authenticity.
While Biden has never been particularly wealthy, Bill and Hillary Clinton have surged into the elite class of mega-millionaires, based on their work delivering high six- and seven-figure speeches at corporate outings.

But Biden and Clinton’s lifestyle differences may matter less than the common experience that links them: The Democratic Party now faces a contest over which candidate will be viewed as the heir to the Obama legacy.

When Clinton’s popularity soared during her stint as secretary of state, many of the president’s top advisers lined up behind her and eventually relocated to her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.

Those familiar with Biden’s views said that left a bad taste with the vice president — as though those aides had decided she represented Obama’s spiritual heir.

During President Obama’s second term, Clinton has distanced herself from the West Wing on several major initiatives, including several that she personally worked on during his first term. On foreign policy, she split with Obama in calling for a more aggressive approach to the Syrian civil war by establishing a no-fly zone to protect rebels. This month, she also came out against the major trade deal that Obama struck with 11 Pacific Rim nations despite the fact that her State Department had negotiated key portions of the pact.

Biden stands behind Obama on both those issues, a show of loyalty that has won respect from key presidential advisers. “What he is now is a greatly enhanced figure. I think he’s been a model vice president. He’s been impeccably loyal in public, and unwaveringly honest in private,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser since his 2004 Senate campaign.

Five months ago, the idea of a presidential campaign seemed implausible. Biden’s son was secretly at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, undergoing aggressive treatment for brain cancer. The vice president’s public schedule faded as he made daily treks from the Naval Observatory to the hospital, and some advisers privately wondered whether he would finish his term if his son died.

As Biden’s advisers acknowledged later, Beau Biden encouraged his father to enter the 2016 race, launching what would be his third presidential bid. The first two tries ended ignominiously, with Biden withdrawing from the 1988 contest in the fall of 1987 after plagiarism allegations, and bowing out of the 2008 race early after barely registering any support in the Iowa caucuses.

But as the 2008 campaign went awry, and Obama and Clinton went on to an epic battle, the seeds of the 2016 campaign may have been sown.

In the last days of the Iowa caucuses, Biden allowed a Washington Post reporter to trail him and his family around the state. He said that voters wanted authenticity and “can smell it when it’s not real.”

“I would hope that Joe would never be a politician like Hillary Clinton,” Jill Biden, his wife, interjected at one point.
“Stop that,” Joe Biden said.

“He thinks with his head and his heart,” Jill Biden said.

POLITICO reports how George W. Bush unleashes on Ted Cruz. 'I just don't like that guy,' the former president tells donors.
151019_george_w_bush_gty_1160.jpg
Inside a sleek Denver condominium, George W. Bush let a hundred donors to his brother’s campaign in on a secret. Of all the rival Republican candidates, there is one who gets under the former president’s skin, whom he views as perhaps Jeb Bush’s most serious rival for the party’s nomination.
It isn’t Donald Trump, whose withering insults have sought to make Jeb pay a political price for his brother’s presidency. It isn’t Marco Rubio, Jeb’s former understudy who now poses a serious threat to his establishment support. 

It’s George W. Bush’s former employee — Ted Cruz.
“I just don’t like the guy,” Bush said Sunday night, according to conversations with more than half a dozen donors who attended the event.

One donor in the room said the former president had been offering mostly anodyne accounts of how the Bush family network views the current campaign and charming off-the-cuff jokes, until he launched into Cruz.

“I was like, ‘Holy sh-t, did he just say that?’” the donor said. “I remember looking around and seeing that other people were also looking around surprised.”

“The tenor of what he said about the other candidates was really pretty pleasant,” another donor said. “Until he got to Cruz.”

Bush took a harsh view of Cruz’s apparent alliance with Trump, who stood with the senator at a Capitol Hill rally last month in opposition to the Iran deal. While Trump, the current GOP poll leaders, has attacked most of his competitors in the 2016 field, he has avoided criticizing Cruz.

One donor, paraphrasing the former president’s comment in response to a broad question about how he viewed the primary race and the other Republican candidates, said: “He said he found it ‘opportunistic’ that Cruz was sucking up to Trump and just expecting all of his support to come to him in the end,” that donor added.

George W. Bush is well acquainted with his home-state senator, who served as a domestic policy adviser on his 2000 campaign before rising to national prominence by distancing himself from — and often going out of his way to antagonize — the GOP establishment. In his book published earlier this year, Cruz ripped Bush’s record, criticizing elements of his foreign policy and faulting the administration for enabling "bigger government and excessive spending and new entitlements."

While Jeb Bush’s campaign is spending far more time of late pushing out information that contrasts favorably with Rubio, his oldest brother seemed to see Cruz as the biggest threat in the end. According to several donors, the former president said not to doubt Cruz’s strength.

“He said he thought Cruz was going to be a pretty formidable candidate against Jeb, especially in Texas and across the South,” a donor said.

A spokesman for the former president pushed back at the takeaway that he views Cruz as his brother's main obstacle in the 15-candidate primary field.

"The first words out of President Bush's mouth last night were that Jeb is going to earn the nomination, win the election, and be a great president," said Freddy Ford, George W. Bush's spokesman. "He does not view Sen. Cruz as Gov. Bush's most serious rival."

Cruz's campaign, after initially declining to comment for this story, provided a statement from the senator Monday night.
“I have great respect for George W Bush, and was proud to work on his 2000 campaign and in his administration," Cruz said. "It's no surprise that President Bush is supporting his brother and attacking the candidates he believes pose a threat to his campaign. I have no intention of reciprocating. I met my wife Heidi working on his campaign, and so I will always be grateful to him."

The donors at the event were a mix of establishment stalwarts like former Gov. Bill Owens and business executive Larry Mizel as well as a number of young professionals, who were offered reduced $250 tickets at the last minute in an effort to fill the room, according to an email the organizer circulated among potential supporters and obtained by

The former president was softer in critiquing Rubio, whom many view as the biggest threat for establishment support and, by extension, the nomination itself. After recognizing Rubio’s political and rhetorical skills, George W. Bush reprised the common criticism of the first-term senator — experience. But then, jokingly, he undercut himself.

“He’s a young, first-term senator; I’m not sure if that qualifies you to be president,” Bush reportedly said, according to two people in the room. “Of course, if he wins [the nomination], I’ll be back here next year telling you that doesn’t matter.”
Bush also cast Cruz’s candidacy as an exercise in personal gain, not service. “He sort of looks at this like Cruz is doing it all for his own personal gain, and that’s juxtaposed against a family that’s been all about public service and doing it for the right reasons," a donor said. "He's frustrated to have watched Cruz basically hijack the Republican Party of Texas and the Republican Party in Washington."

The former president, who lives in Dallas, was appearing at his fourth fundraiser in less than a month for his brother’s campaign, which is hoping to capitalize on the family legacy and donor network without allowing the 43rd president’s controversial record to become a distraction. He will also be appearing along with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, at an event in Houston this weekend that was set up to reward new donors to Jeb Bush’s campaign with the rare opportunity to see two former presidents and, potentially, a third in the same room.

During some 35 minutes of unscripted remarks inside billionaire industrialist Lanny Martin’s condominium adjacent to the Daniel Libeskind-designed Denver Art Museum, Bush never addressed his own record, even as his brother was defending it in another war of words with Trump. The developer and entertainer blamed the former president in part for the 9/11 terrorist attacks because they happened on his watch and for the Iraq War.

Instead, George W. Bush offered the same “long haul” view of the race espoused by his brother’s Miami-based campaign and sprinkled in several colorful family anecdotes. He spoke movingly about Jeb’s courtship of his eventual wife, Columba, whom he met when he was just 16 and a student in Mexico.

“Let’s just say it was a surprise for our family,” Bush reportedly said of his brother’s wedding at the age of 21 to the former Columba Garnica de Gallo.

In touting his brother’s experience and qualifications to be president, Bush acknowledged their differences, emphasizing his younger brother’s thoughtful, deliberative nature. He asserted that Jeb’s more inclusive tone on immigration would make him the party’s best hope of drawing Hispanic voters back to the Republican Party. (George W. Bush was the last Republican to win a large percentage of the Latino vote.)
Bush gave further definition to the brothers’ contrasting personalities by showing off a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Donald Trump poses for photos outside the New York Stock Exchange after the listing of his stock on Wed., June 7, 1995 in New York.  He took his flagship Trump Plaza Casino public.

“He was talking about the need to reach out to immigrants and he said, ‘There’s a lot of people in this country who speak broken English,’” a donor recounted. “And then he paused and said, ‘Well, I’m one of them.’”
Despite his lasting appeal to a large swath of establishment Republicans, the former president told donors it’s unlikely he would hit the campaign trail for his brother at any point. Jeb Bush, asked in Iowa two weeks ago if he’d been grappling with how to best employ his oldest brother, was noncommittal but emphatic that “there’s no grappling going on.”
That seems to be the case.

“He emphasized that he’s not going to be out on the campaign trail doing public events,” one donor said. “He wants to be helpful and supportive like any brother would be. But he said, ‘You’re not going to see a lot of me.’
“Actually, he said that a couple of times.”

Canada election: Liberals sweep to power.
Justin Trudeau is kissed by his mother Margaret, Montreal, 19 Oct 2015
Canada's Liberal Party has decisively won a general election, ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule.
The centrist Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, started the campaign in third place but in a stunning turnaround now command a majority.
Mr Trudeau, the 43-year-old son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, said Canadians had voted for real change.
Incumbent Conservative PM Stephen Harper accepted defeat and his party said he will step down as leader.
It was the longest campaign in Canada's history, and had been thought to be much closer.
Speaking after the polls closed, Mr Harper said he had already congratulated Mr Trudeau, saying the Conservatives would accept the results "without hesitation".
Addressing his jubilant supporters shortly afterwards, Mr Trudeau said that Canadians "sent a clear message tonight - it's time for a change".
"We beat fear with hope, we beat cynicism with hard work. Most of all we defeated the idea that Canadians should be satisfied with less.
"This is what positive politics can do," he said, also praising Mr Harper for his service to the country. Few had predicted a Liberal victory on this scale. They look set to win 184 out of 338 seats - 14 more than they need for a majority.
That represents a huge increase from only 36 that they had held after suffering their worst-ever election result in 2011.
They become the first party ever to move from third place in parliament to a majority in one election in Canada's history.
Chart showing the divide of vote in Canada's 2015 election: Liberals: 184, Conservatives: 99, New Democrats: 44, Bloc Quebecois: 10, Greens 1 - 20 October 2015
The Liberal Party's election platform included:
  • Cutting income taxes for middle-class Canadians while increasing them for the wealthy
  • Running deficits for three years to pay for infrastructure spending
  • Doing more to address environmental concerns over the controversial Keystone oil pipeline
  • Taking more Syrian refugees; pulling out of bombing raids against Islamic State while bolstering training for Iraqi forces
  • Legalising marijuana
Meanwhile, the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) is on course to win 44 seats, less than half the number they held in the outgoing parliament.
"I congratulated Mr Trudeau on his exceptional achievement," said NDP leader Tom Mulcair.
Conservative Party supporters watch election results in Calgary
As the results began pouring in, former Conservative Justice Minister Peter MacKay said: "A sea of change here. We are used to high tides in Atlantic Canada. This is not what we hoped for."

Analysis: Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Montreal

It was a sweeping victory that seemed unthinkable five years ago, improbable just months ago and unlikely even a few days ago.
And yet shortly after midnight on Tuesday, Justin Trudeau took the stage at Liberal headquarters as prime minister elect.
When Mr Harper first announced that this year's general election campaign would be a record 78 days long, conventional wisdom was it would benefit the Conservatives, giving them more time to bring their financial advantages to bear.
In hindsight, however, the lengthy campaign gave Mr Trudeau an opportunity to introduce himself to Canadians and overcome conservative attacks that characterised the 43-year-old former high-school drama teacher as too inexperienced to lead the Canadian nation.
Mr Trudeau also successfully outmanoeuvred the New Democratic Party, campaigning to that party's left on economic issues.
For Mr Trudeau, the hard work of bringing the Liberal Party back from the ashes is over. Now, as the next prime minister of Canada, the even harder work of governing is about to begin.
New Democratic Party supporters react to election results in Montreal
Mr Trudeau campaigned on a promise of change, urging voters ahead of the polling day to "come together as a country".
Mr Trudeau's charismatic father, Pierre, is considered the father of modern Canada.
Mr Harper, 56, portrayed himself as the steady hand who could steer Canada's troubled economy back on track.
His campaign ran TV advertisements saying that Mr Trudeau was "just not ready" to take office.

Iran says Saudi, not Tehran, destabilising Middle East. Saudi Arabia, not Iran, is destabilising the Middle East, an official in Tehran said Tuesday, rejecting claims from Riyadh that Iran is acting like a "colonising state".

The comments from foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham come after Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Monday accused Iran of "meddling in the affairs" of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Relations between Iran, the region's dominant Shiite Muslim power, and Saudi Arabia, its Sunni rival, have been fraught since an uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad broke out in 2011.

Iran openly backs Assad and is also accused of supporting Shiite Huthi rebels who overran large parts of Yemen last year and early this year.

Relations soured further after Saudi Arabia's decision to launch an air campaign in Yemen.

The deaths of at least 464 Iranian pilgrims in the recent hajj stampede in Mina and further Iranian military activity in Syria saw ties plunge again, with increasingly abrasive statements from both sides.

Afkham described Jubeir's remarks -- he had said the kingdom would use all its "political, economic and military powers" to defend itself -- were "despicable, arrogant and non-diplomatic".

"This destructive and non-constructive approach leads nowhere," Afkham said of Jubeir, who had demanded that Iran pull fighters out of Syria, stop supplying arms to Assad and cease to act like a "colonising state" there.

Afkham responded: "The Saudi foreign minister, whose country has a military and extremist approach to crises... and bombed continuously for seven months in Yemen, is not qualified to talk about the role of Iran in the region."

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