the joy of moderation. here a spring of nineteen forty five on our team. hungry for the full story we've gotten from. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. seven thirty pm in moscow here are the headlines the world's top terrorist brought down the u.s. president confirms osama bin laden has been killed in a special operation but questions are arising over who initially supported the world's most wanted terrorists libyan state television shows the bodies of colonel gadhafi son and grandchildren killed in a nato bombing in tripoli outraged government supporters respond by storming western embassies forcing the when to withdraw its staff from the capital. and with nuclear safety again in the spotlight following the events at fukushima and the

anniversary of sure noble russian power plants introduce new levels of safety precautions to avoid a disastrous repeat next intense debate on the upcoming presidential election in the u.s. and some controversial candidates coming your way in crosstalk. to keep. the. low in welcome across dark i'm peter lavelle is he for real he's got a t.v. show claims to be rich and has a signature hairstyle of course it is the donald donald trump he says he may or may not run for the u.s. presidency irrespective of the final answer what does all this trump mania say about america and its politics.

trump as a presidential candidate i'm joined by cliff schecter in columbus he's an author pundit and president of litter costs in boston we have alan schroeder he's an associate professor in the school of journalism at northeastern university and in washington we cross to alex vogel he's a partner at mehlman vogel castagnetti all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want but first let's look at the man who wants to say you're fired to president obama. as the next year's presidential election approaches the two main parties are thinking ahead with no obvious frontrunner among republicans there is clearly an opening it is all the time think grapples with a sluggish economy this is over so one of the reasons american billionaire make a run for the white house he says he will make his intentions known. real estate mogul and owner of golf courses and a t.v. star knows how to team his audience some scritches as well the current president

speaks volumes to this particularly when jumping on the brother's train claiming it was not on american soil is now as barry has in his foreign policy positions united states is becoming the laughing stock of the world. trump also chimes in the china should be punished with a twenty five percent tariff on its imports and opec should be told to cut oil prices if the man known for his has told the president now he must have taken over leavin oil fields and profits with u.s. allies. should you know when you will work like to the victor belong the spoils and the latest gallup poll shows trump one of the leaders and last likely republican voters living sarah paling in the dust trump has already shown some of his campaign cards but it's hard to say what they think has no real trumps to plait the billionaire make up its allies on the current political malays but even the american supposed to pick him doesn't mean that they get a sponsor become more of

a life and stark in their super travel across stark r.t. . ok cliff i'd like to start now with you where you wrote in your weekly column about donald trump he is living in body image of every degrading aspect of american culture what do you mean by that. i love it but really look. i appreciate that thank you lou i mean for thirty years now this guy has been you know whatever it takes to get to get attention he's sort of built himself first of all he's spun a false resume he's somebody that knew that image in the united states and particularly in politics and business in many areas has become more important than reality which is he talks a big game you know he promotes himself and lessly but the truth is that look he inherited money from from his daddy he had to declare bankruptcy twice he tried to run a football league it was a abysmal failure so this guy who really has not been a very successful businessman at all has has used. you know i'll give him credit

there brilliantly you know in a shameless fashion to make himself turn into this icon of business which he's absolutely not so that was a main point of mine about how image trumps reality you know when we're living in a reality t.v. culture versus reality and so he's gone beyond the reality t.v. and everything else about american culture that isn't real and he's used that to get himself in a position where he's first in the polls and so that's i mean right now that is sort of a classic. parts of problem frankly with it with american political culture which is taking on entertainment culture values and you know if you've got the crazy hair like he does and the big mouth that often but by having the biggest males in the room you paid the most attention to so he can ask where obama's birth certificate is from even though we have no clue where his hair is from. is a good word to alan if i go to you in boston you know george w.

bush was a failure in business before he became president and nobody held out against him here you know what is this i mean is this is just really just a reality t.v. show the extension of the trump pseudo reality i mean is he really fusing the two together he's still on t.v. quite literally. oh yeah he sure is well we don't really know what his objective is here is this really about a run for the presidency i mean he's certainly making a lot of noise and to rection but the the alternative explanation would be that he's simply furthering his own ego and you know there is a tradition in this country about cider candidates and i don't think that in general it's a bad idea to bring new blood into the mix the problem here is he's starting at the very top i mean even outside our candidates like ronald reagan was governor of california before he ever became president or thought about running for president so it's this weird mix of you know the sort of media culture that we live in this this evil maniacal guy and one other thing i would throw in which is that the

republican field right now is extremely ambiguous there is not a clear front runner which leaves this opening for somebody like trump alex if i go to you in washington how do and it's really really early days and he hasn't even declared ok. but how is this going to start shaping their campaign how much of an impact will trump's being there threatening to run if you waits after this these are these so-called deadline i guess is before june i mean how does it start shaping the republican debate before we go much further into the election. and i think it does really start to shape it for this reason i look i don't take him seriously as a candidate i think the entire thing is a testament to name i.d. alone in his own particular brand of media fascination but what i what it does is this kind of trump theater of the absurd takes an already scrambled wide open field

and starts to tell people look this is not the year to run because if this is what we're talking about this shows they are you going to get up on a stage as a real candidate with donald trump and talk a lot more so you me outrageous things will get a lot of coverage will make all of the other candidates look ridiculous if this is serious because it's me to sit it out right because there's just how do you keep right but how do you compete with crazy anybody. that makes michele bachmann look sane ok i would say anything anybody that made a show bachmann look seen is. anybody that makes michele bachmann look sane is that an amazing service for the republican party in that way but no i mean it's true for most people on that stage the ones that are the real contenders are romney and paul and yet he can only diminish them by his presence because they're going to have to answer all of these are really ridiculous questions and listen to him bragging about his wealth and all that you know his hot wife and all the other unbelievably

silly things he says but you know who knows maybe as i said michele bachmann or a couple to crazier ones will be made a little bit sane so it will benefit i have to say the go ahead the real winner here is president obama and the democrats they've been engaging with you know everyone said why is the president actually releasing this person to get now the answer is look if they can engage with the donald trump if they can make that look like that sort of that's a legitimate republican contender for them then that that's the counterpoint to them they're like look i'm president of the united states i'm a real person no matter what you think of my policies and this is what i have to deal with on the other side it makes it a real challenge for the for the legitimate republic. and feel come out well and i looked at the pseudo press conference today and i wouldn't know i was going to say i saw the press conference that day a bit from cave right after his he's boasting of victory finally got to be the birth certificate but you know it's very interesting and looked to me that he just was recycling a lot of ideas from a variety of candidates during the midterm elections china was there the gas price

of gasoline there opec's there and now he's thrown in this little bit about libya which could have been iraq ok he did make the difference is he i didn't have any nuance i mean it really looked like to me joe six-pack package idea is that a lot of people sitting on the couch unemployed or whatever saying yeah i mean you know he made a lot of money maybe i'll give him a shot i mean what i'm saying is he really goes for the base. yeah except you know the interesting thing about his positions is this is not the first time he's made noise about running for president he tried to become the reform party candidate i think it was in two thousand and back then he had a whole different. political priorities including he was for universal health care the thing that obama's opponents were driven crazy by so i mean there is such inconsistency here from a substantive standpoint that you have no idea what the guy stands for or whether he stands for anything you know if i go back you i want to take watching that press

conference it seemed to me that the media was just having a ball they were just like kids in a candy shop they baited him they want him to say these outrageous things i mean they're part of his feeder this is the base in both sides are enabling each other it's really amazing to watch because everyone's part of the show. right and that's what i was trying to get at my column which is you know the media loves that because you know they don't care i mean i think they ended it saying you know is this reality is this is the show business who knows but it doesn't matter because he's now cities that announce whether when he's not going to know if he's running on his reality the last edition of his reality show he's going to announce whether he's going to announce whether he's run so this is him just sort of taking it to the absurd and for the media it's like eye candy it's perfect for american political media because they need stories and this guy is going to give him a ton of them i mean he he's already picked fights this past week with jerry seinfeld and robert de niro you know he he i mean you can expect he'll say nasty

things about people across the board and again you know. as was just said i mean he was for universal health care eight years ago he gave tons of money to nancy pelosi and supported all sorts of democrats he was pro-choice he was for gay rights he was for gun control i mean he's he's honestly is getting to a point where he literally makes mitt romney look like a steadfast man of principle who hasn't switched on any decisions this is the guy is like two in court wheels ok alex go to we go to you before we go to the break ok . the real issue here is you know once we get past this flush of reality television piece i'm i assume trump going to try and get himself on the stage for the debates and the real question is going to be whether the media outlets who are sponsoring the debates at that point your credibility is really on the line do you let this guy on the stage or do you call the question and say you're not a legitimate candidate but frankly on what basis do you say that i mean how do you carve at what point do you draw the line how do you carve him out i think they start to look really silly if they put them up there the moderators who were for

the most part legitimate broadcasters don't want to have donald trump on the stage notwithstanding it would be great for the ratings because they look like fools are going to jump in here i just can't wait to get back after the break after the break we'll continue our discussion on candidate trump state with forty. it's. twenty years ago the largest country. to certain places to. see. what had been a chance. to speak and enjoy. where did it take.

the moment when the world changed forever. thousands passed to nothing. thousands wounded. and doomed to suffer today. was the first but probably not the landstuhl military uses of this weapon. well many more will need come. soon common get on in the future wealthy british style holds sometimes such. markets financed scandals find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to cause

a report on r.t.e. . kitchen sisters. welcome back to crossfire i'm curious about remind you we're talking about donald trump's potential presidential run. kitchen. story. ok alan i'd like to go back to you i mean this isn't the first time we've seen celebrities coming out. knowing there how to potentially throwing their hat into the ring here we have arnold schwarzenegger i mean he was he was elected in real active in california we have jesse ventura which to you know still makes the the scene as a former politician but he still listen to fred thompson maybe not the greatest campaigner but he did make a bid and we have other people that you know the new incarnation in ronald reagan

is the greatest one that is this point on this program he was elected governor of california before he became president are we moving steadily into the age of celebrities fusing in with politics is this just a trend that's going to get continue. yes i think so and you know the names that you mentioned are really only scratching the surface there really are two categories that these people come from one would be the entertainment world the other would be the sports world there are tons of former athletes that are now filling the halls of congress the state houses of of the fifty states of the u.s. cetera et cetera in addition to a number of entertainers that have made the transition what's so interesting about trump in all of this is that you know he's coming in supposedly as a business celebrity but he really is an entertainer and as was pointed out earlier i mean his business career if you really scrutinize it is nothing to write home about so i mean you know he's coming at this from the standpoint not even of an actor but a reality television star and that's

a whole new sort of category of celebrity in this country i have a feeling that we're going to see more of those people there's a member of congress from wisconsin right now they're in to started out as an m.t.v. real world. cast member so you know unfortunately the way that celebrity works in this country i think that this fusion between the fame and politics gets only more intense now if i'm not mistaken wasn't it was it go i said go through from love boat wasn't he didn't he make it into congress to you know was a go as far as he was using that is really a row you guys all know good. luck we're going to know explosion and you know you've got to go now it's going to addition of celebrity politics in this country and politicians have long understood whether it was the entertainment world or the military whatever their their national prominence was i mean look eisenhower was certainly helped by the fact that he had one hundred percent name i.d. for his work career the difference here with trump is even sean duffy the gentleman

who was on m.t.v.'s real world who's now a member of congress mr duffy went home and became a prosecutor fred thompson had a legitimate career as a prosecutor before he decided to run for office jones who benefits if. hazard actually had a public policy career sonny bono had been better mayor so the difference is trump is famous for being truck i mean as was pointed out his his real business ak human is branding the trump name and somehow implying that you know put gold letters up in a building it says trump there is some kind of cheesy pun ash there that's the difference he's only famous for being famous so these other posts were at least leveraging that fame into something else so cliff if he did run he could have paris hilton is b.p. right i mean that then you agree wrap it doesn't say. that's the show you know i mean the treasury secretary i'm sorry go ahead we got charlie sheen when it came crashing for a treasury secretary i mean no i mean i i want to answer the serious point which is

being that these days politics is be so much around name recognition and money that it's inevitable especially with entertainment and political media becoming one in the same it's inevitable to go this direction and what was just pointed out was very astute and exactly right on which is at least most of these other guys were talked about i mean ronald reagan was like him or hate him for you know not only was governor but for years he was a pitchman you know alford for what for g.e. i mean he was involved in politics he ran the screen actors guild you know it's a lot of these guys were involved in some way in serious careers related to politics for years but we're now getting to a point where really so i mean you hear people every day now famous people just throwing out the idea that they may run for the senate they may run you know we're we're really going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel with vanilla ice you know run for running for senate i mean that's that's kind of the point we're getting so i mean you know i mean that's that's one of the records it strikes me as

i had. yeah it seems to me that a pale and whose name has not been mentioned so far has something to do with this because i think when she was put forward as a clearly unqualified candidate for the vice presidency four years ago it made a lot of people suddenly think well wait a minute if she can do it why can't i and so i see a lot of sarah pailin influence in this whole trump run for the presidency and that's what it is alex you know and in doing research for this program and there are so many tabloid things about trump out there now it's not you know it's easy to come across it but some of the more serious stuff that i look at is that there are some very serious doubts by some very serious people who trump isn't nearly as affluent as he likes to claim to be as a matter of fact one reaches a researcher point out rhetorical says you your net value may be higher then he is he because he's so terribly incorrect. right he is horribly in debt i mean he's built a quote career i put quotes around that on again branding and leverage and

a lot of it hasn't worked out terribly well they'll build some gigantic complex it will go bust someone will buy it for pennies on the share and trump points to it and says oh yeah i built this masterpiece well from a business perspective that's frankly ridiculous so yeah there is a no if he well and if he was in any way put through the real root of a presidential campaign i think he would be eaten alive just on the business stuff that's before you get to the personal stuff or you know past statements or you know any of that just on the business stuff he'd get eaten alive and you want to jump in there go ahead i was just going to make the point that one of the things the donald trump said when he was demanding that the president produce his birth certificate if this birth certificate were produced that trump would release his tax returns were all of a sudden that's what we're not seeing the tax returns so i think this question about his net worth which he claims to be between two and three billion dollars is a really good one and i hope that we you know if this persists that journalistically we move beyond just the the kind of the laugh value of this in

sort of scrutinizing in a way that legitimate candidates have to be scrutinized what he is actual you know what he brings to the table as a businessman radcliff. well they're saying along those lines i think that's already starting to happen you know he's used to being able to say whatever he wants and sound off in attack people and people didn't really pay attention but now these kind of saying i may run for office i mean i just saw a report the huffington post that his original business partners had mob ties yes that's something that is a big investigative piece that's now out there i mean when you look at this guy's history his marriages his behavioral problems i mean you get kicked out of high school basically because he couldn't because because he had behavioral problems i think there's going be a lot of other things you know he's now open this door to looking into this guy's a very very demented life and you know i think the media's going to have a field day alex what is what is the upside for for trump and doing this is it just

just the ultimate ego. you know i mean the end of his program you just kind of you know the gallery of it all ok getting all of the attention because this may be the last time that he really can do it is it is maybe just a very victory lap there is no there is virtually no downside for him i mean the reality is what could happen to him i you know he's not widely respected as a businessman he's he does not have a reputation in that sense to defend if he actually stayed long enough to get out of the press taking a part it would actually hurt him because i'm sure they would find things that even donald trump would find it very hard to imagine but even from might be embarrassed by what they've got so i really there is very little downside for him which is why he's doing it and he will stay in right up until that becomes the case i mean in some point the network will decide ok we can't actually have you on television anymore he will use that to get even more press he will have some sort of charlie charlie sheen like split with a network over his political ambitions which will lead to yet another show you know

trump and charlie plus eight whatever it is but i really i don't think there's a downside howie what do you think is very this is absolutely no downside for this kind of behavior which is really. degrading to american politics and we were talking before we went on air you know one of the phrases i like to use when i look at american politics is that everybody's having this huge argument about the seating arrangement on the titanic and you know and we're all having a good laugh right here but the country doesn't really need a good laugh it needs a really serious good marginal person to be at the helm and irrespective of what you think about mr obama you can see i mean most people say obama and trump are not the same. yeah i mean it's a good points and you know it's just the trump is i think there is a downside in that is that his ratings on the apprentice has started to decline and i think that you know his currency is as a as someone who can command the media if he becomes such

a joke and if he if he sort of you know. fritters away all of this all of this fame that he's built up over the years by making such stupid statements that people just start to ignore him then then he risks irrelevance ultimately any risks getting a show cancelled and people get fed up with him and stop watching what you think about that clip there is downside then. no i agree with alan look i think there's mostly a long term to maybe less downside but right now i mean it's important to know that his ratings allister have gone way down and there's a reason there are i saw a study yesterday that showed that a majority of those i don't know how they do these studies but i'm not in that business a majority of those who are watching were democrats and he's lost a lot of these people with the birth of an odd sense so even as business active in fails once again because what he did this largely to raise the the ratings in the ratings are falling and you know i'll give you another example now you've got

people who are so angry because he also said to me about obama not being smart enough to go to an ivy league school playing in this is really some subtle if not so subtle racism with some of these comments and so a group of people i just saw on twitter started this this campaign called dumping trump which is to get people to advertisers not to to advertise in his final of the apprentice and groupon just pulled out and now they're going after other major companies so you could end up losing sponsors for a show so then that way certainly in the short term there is a downside it mean to me the downside to him running for president and basically being the idiot that he is pardon the expression my french but the but there is a downside to when he starts playing with his racist nonsense because that's the kind of thing that can get people angry enough activists that they go after him and it looks like that's going to hurt a show ok gentlemen that's what we're going to run out of time here we'll see what mr trump's plans are a few weeks leavings my guest today in washington boston and in columbus and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t.

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