WILL TRUMP ALLOW A GOP PRIMARY DEBATE?
Donald Trump leads his closest rival by 31 points in both the Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight national averages.
It may be early, but that's a lot.
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Pop quiz #1: When was the last time a presidential candidate had a lead that big before the Iowa caucuses?
Answer: George W. Bush, who posted leads as big as 57 points over John McCain throughout 1999.
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And four years prior, Bob Dole was coasting over Phil Gramm by as much as 37 points.
Both Bush and Dole, despite losses in New Hampshire, won their respective nominations with relative ease.
Trump appears positioned to do the same since early frontrunners with sizable leads tend to prevail, even if hiccups arise.
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Pop quiz #2: Who is the only Republican presidential candidate with a double-digit pre-Iowa lead to lose the nomination?
Answer: Rudy Giuliani, who led by as much as 17 in the early days of 2007, months before he was sunk by a sex scandal involving misuse of government funds.
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The problem for the longshots is: Trump has no incentive to debate. And as he made clear on Fox News this week, he knows it.
TRUMP INDICTMENT WATCH
She has been a Trump loyalist, but that was before the 11th Circuit twice reversed her summarily in the search warrant case. Concerned with her career as a judge, she may have gotten religion. Her aspirational, even if unlikely, August trial date indicates as much.
Given this late date, any related indictment will come well into Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination and any trial, quite possibly, after his second inaugural in 2025 when the 47th president won’t dawdle and will end the federal case against himself.
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