...to think surely nobody will vote Donald Trump now?

[QuizteamBleakley]

Donald Trump thinks there should be a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S.

Beeb news here.

Roger Stone, who was a Trump top guy but resigned recently, has just been on Sky News and said that "Trump has just increased his chances of becoming President".

Amazing.

I'm a yank

Trump is appalling. This is awful.

But I'm proud to be American, even more proud when soo many of my country folk are facing his statements with resentment and labelling it Un-American.

I am also quite happy that everyone is watching this happen, because everyone is crawling out of the woodwork all over the world denouncing how backwards these sentiments are.

even Dick Cheney who I only saw as the face of pure evil.

lets all just believe good will come of this, I hope all those standing behind Mr.Trump and he himself will be able to see what it means to be in a country that was built on the concept of Freedom.

The Statue of Liberty is based on an Arabic Woman Credible Source

The only reason Dick Cheney bestirred himself to denounce Trump is that the GOP is in a panic lest Trump win the primaries. He's not a lapdog like Rubio or Bush. If one of them had said the same thing about Muslims, Dick Cheney would be applauding.

What a toxic mess American politics has become. So much good could've been happening since GWB was ousted and instead, gridlock and increasing fringe insanity. I hate it.

FundraisingPTABitch, it looks like it is going to be hell of an election contest. Roger Stone is worth listening to on youtube etc. He says "Trump is for real" and he means to win and by the sound of it that means that Trump will go all out to tell the truth and dish the dirt on his opponents. Gawd knows what is going to come out. They will all be against Trump, but I don't think that means he will necessarily lose.

Faisal Islam, Sky's politcal commentator, asking on Sky News "how seriously is the British government treating the prospect of a President Trump?"

I think they will need to treat it very seriously because if Trump wins, the entire world will change. Climate change, political correctness, the whole lot will be finished overnight. Just about everything will change.

it will be WW3 if he wins.

'it will be WW3 if he wins.'

No, because he says he thinks he will get on well with Putin. With Trump, there will be no more war. Isis will be wiped out in weeks, together with the Russians helping to do it.

I know who I think the likely republican candidate will turn out to be.
Its not Trump.
But he'll do huge amounts of damage in the mean time.

'I know who I think the likely republican candidate will turn out to be.'

Who do you think it is?
The Establishment seem to have given up on Jeb abd are now rooting for piuppet, Rubio. Cruz is the closest challenger to Trump at the moment as Carson ha faded, but it seems that none of the politicos actually like Cruz on a personal level, and Trump has hinted that Cruz could possibly be his vice. I still think Trump will do it and they won't be able to stop him.

Lots of unlikely leaders have come from nowhere and surprised everybody in the past. Think adolph hitler and his acolytes who gained power from a very low base in 1930s Germany for a start.

ISIS might be wiped out but what about assad? and what about all other radicals that will spring up direclty due to trump.

I think Trumps comments are atrocious.

However the Nazi's in this picture are ISIS they are the ones, rounding up people they don't like out in Syria et al, they are the ones committing actual genocide, hanging gay people, raping, beheading...They are the ones who want to wipe the rest of us out, and take machine guns to innocents to do it.....

'ISIS might be wiped out but what about assad? '

Trump has said that we don't know who we are backing in Syria and that Assad seems better than the lot we are backing. If Trump makes it, I think the entire policy wil change overnight and Assad will stay in power. There will be no other radicals to challenge Trump because Isis and the other radicals have been funded by some people in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey and if Trump makes it, all of that funding will be stopped and the people funding them wil be arrested.

But as long as assad stays in power, the civil struggle will continue - as long as there are actually some people left alive to do it, and the cycle and vaccum will go on.

russia doesnt care who it bombs, its already making loads of enemies!

'the civil struggle will continue'

No because all the rebels have been funded and armed by some of teh best missiles that their funders can buy. If Trump wins, all funding taps are shut tight and it is the end of the war and the end of all of the Jihadis and their backers.

As the Tea Party says, a storm is on the way and Trump will clean up Washington. There are an awful lot of puppets across the entire world who are worried about their positions if Trump gets in. The entire world will change and puppets will be swept out of office worldwide.

I think it is going to be one hell of an election and we will never have seen anything like it. Trump is taking on the Establishment and no one has even seen that before. It is not like politically correct elections here where they are all in it together. Roger Stone says "Trump won't be bullied, he can't be bought, he is fearless" and that is what scares the puppets and their backers.

Ohhhh the dangers of the charismatic demagogue riding a wave of discontent and alienation!!! IMO the most he can achieve - has achieved, is that he has pulled the political discourse in the US further into the fascist right. Now you've got Obama "challenging" US Muslims to do something about fundamentalism within their ranks.

I'm sure Trump and the rest of the republican fascist right are just praying for 9'11 level attack.

Trump is not going to be nominated (my bet is on Rubio - he ticks more of the boxes than any other candidate) and even if he were he would have no chance of being elected.

Most of the electoral college votes are locked up in safe Republican or Democrat states. Even in their best result in recent decades - 2004, at the height of the war on terror, before Iraq had been shown to be a disaster, and against a truly dire Democrat candidate - the Republicans only cleared the winning threashold by 16 electoral college votes.

To win, any candidate has to try to persuade the swing states, and that means moving away from base-pleasing extremes. It really doesn't matter if Trump is able to pick up 99% of the votes in somewhere like, say, Alabama, because they could slap a red rosette on a turnip and call it the Republican candidate and Alabama would still vote for it. To win, Trump would need to be able to hold all the current Republican states and take big swing ones like Florida.

Trump would be doubly screwed because (a) he is way out to the right of his own party's centre and (b) he is the most Hispanophobic candidate on the slate. Who seriously thinks a platform as racist as his has any chance of winning Florida (a key swing state with 29 electoral college votes)? There have been mutterings that he could cost the Republicans Texas, which has a huge Hispanic population (I can't see that happening, though).

The overwhelmingly most likely outcome of a Trump nomination is a Clinton victory. Analysts know it, the Republican Party elite and big donors know it, and so, perhaps, does Donald Trump.

It's politics. Stick a few twats in to ensure the other twats ones look more reasonable. They will already know at what point hell drop or be pushed put. The scarier thing is that they're actually serious about Jeb Bush.

What I'm saying is; it needs to look, at least to the majority, like a fair, well fought contest.

The scarier thing is that they're actually serious about Jeb Bush.

Not any more. Bush's presidential bid is looking pretty dead at this point. If you have to ask your campaign staff to start working for free because you're running out of money a year before the election, that's not a good sign. He's currently on 3% among Republican voters. And in an election where lots of Republicans want change, yet another Bush won't be a votewinner.

Yes, I'd not taken that into account. You're right.

But you're right that after Trump (and Carson) the others might look normal. Though I'm not sure that even Trump would be enough to make Ted Cruz look normal.

'my bet is on Rubio - he ticks more of the boxes than any other candidate'

But I don't think slick Rubio with his finances and his following the line can ever beat Hilary. All of the Republican candidates are minnows compared to Hilary apart from Trump. Trump could trounce her, but the others wil fail.

I don't think he'll beat Clinton either - I think at this point its hard to see how the Republicans can repair the damage that's been donw to their party's chances by Trump and Carson. But he'll lose the election less badly than Trump would, so he's the best bet.

Lindsey Graham, who is technically still a candidate (thought I'm not sure anyone remembered that until this week) had some very interesting things to say about his party at the Republican Jewish Convention last week. I wouldn't normally agree with him, but he's right about this, and you can bet the old guard of his party know it: