Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Thursday suggested his popularity increases after tragedies, pointing to his rise in polls after last month's Paris terrorist attacks.
Trump made the comment while pushing back on a GOP memo that scrutinizes his White House candidacy and defending his support for certain demographics, such as women, according to CNN.
"I'm gonna get people jobs and I'm going to protect people. And that's why whenever there's a tragedy, everything goes up, my numbers go way up because we have no strength in this country, we have weak, sad politicians," the billionaire businessman told the network.
Trump stood at 24.8 percent support in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls on Nov. 13, the day of the deadly attacks in Paris.
He ticked upward in the weeks following the attacks, reaching 27.8 percent support on Nov. 28.
His comment follows a similar point made by a Twitter supporter, which the celebrity real estate tycoon shared earlier Thursday, that states: "His poll numbers jump every time instances like this occur."
Indeed, the latest CNN poll shows Trump way ahead now at 36% to Ted Cruz's 16%, as Dr. Ben Carson has dropped to 14% along with Rubio. It's looking more and more like the party of abject fear and loathing wants a master debater like Trump to run things, and they might end up nominating him.
Or maybe they'll destroy him instead.
Donald Trump tapped a man to be a senior business adviser to his real-estate empire even after the man's past involvement in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme had become publicly known, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.
Portions of Trump's relationship with Felix Sater, a convicted felon and government informant, have been previously known. Trump worked with the company where Sater was an executive, Bayrock Group LLC, after it rented office space from the Trump Organization as early as 2003. Sater's criminal history was effectively unknown to the public at the time, because a judge kept the relevant court records secret and Sater altered his name. When Sater's criminal past and Mafia links came to light in 2007, Trump distanced himself from Sater.
But less than three years later, Trump renewed his ties with Sater. Sater presented business cards describing himself as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, and he had an office on the same floor as Trump's own office in New York's Trump Tower, The Associated Press learned through interviews and court records.
Trump said during an AP interview on Wednesday that he recalled only bare details of Sater.
"Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it," Trump said, referring questions about Sater to his staff. "I'm not that familiar with him."
According to Trump lawyer Alan Garten, Sater's role was to prospect for high-end real estate deals for the Trump Organization. The arrangement lasted six months, Garten said.
Which is a big deal because that puts Trump in bed with the mob, and the mob in bed with the Russians. Which we've known about since 2007, raising questions about if this is the best oppo research that the GOP has on the guy.
I'm not saying he can't win, we know any Republican will get 45% of the vote minimum, even Trump.
But maybe he won't get much more than that.
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