The number one single today in 1957 was the first number one rock and roll single to be written by its singer:
The number one single today in 1963 …
… which sounds suspiciously similar to a song released seven years later:
The number one single today in 1957 was the first number one rock and roll single to be written by its singer:
The number one single today in 1963 …
… which sounds suspiciously similar to a song released seven years later:
With one week before the Wisconsin presidential primary, Politico reports:
None of the remaining Republican presidential candidates is likely to emerge as the nominee from a contested convention in July, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Thursday.
While Donald Trump has a 274-delegate lead over Ted Cruz in his pursuit to 1,237, the Republican front-runner still needs to win nearly 500 more delegates to secure a majority and the nomination outright. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has only won a single state thus far and has just 143 delegates, has maintained no one will head to Cleveland with 1,237, which would free delegates in most states to vote for any eligible candidate after the first ballot is cast.
“I think if it’s an open convention, it’s very likely [the nominee] would be someone who’s not currently running,” Walker said Thursday, according to Madison.com.
Speaking to reporters after signing a bill, the former presidential candidate, who dropped out in September, cautioned that many prognostications for this election cycle have been wrong.
“I mean, who knows. The one thing I qualify — it’s like the qualifications you see on those ads you see for car dealerships,” Walker said. “I think any of us who comments on this election [has] to qualify that almost every prediction’s been off, so it’s hard to predict anything.”
Walker has yet to endorse a candidate ahead of his state’s April 5 primary but indicated he has been in contact with Cruz and Kasich’s campaigns and would decide whether he would support either candidate in the coming days. On Wednesday, he hinted he was leaning toward Cruz, describing the Texas senator as “the only one who’s got a chance other than Donald Trump to win the nomination.”
As for Trump’s camp, Walker said he hasn’t heard “a peep.”
“In fact, I don’t know, other than the candidate, what kind of infrastructure, if anything, they have here, which is similar to what I hear from others around the country,” he said.
Kasich campaigned in Wauwatosa on Wednesday. Cruz will hold a rally in Janesville — home of U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan — later Thursday, and Trump will hold a town hall there Tuesday.
As of today, I can’t vote for either Cruz or Trump. The latter should be obvious; as for the former, I am unconvinced he would perform well nationally given how personally unlikable he appears to be. (I write “appears to be” since he hasn’t visited me.)
The number one British single today in 1963 may make you tap your foot:
Today in 1966, Mick Jagger got in the way of a chair thrown onto the stage during a Rolling Stones concert in Marseilles, France.
The title and artist are the same for the number one album today in 1969:
The Washington Post‘s opinionmongers interviewed Donald Trump, and your opinion will probably go in more than one direction:
[Post opinion editor Fred] HIATT: If I could, I’d start by asking is there a secretary of state and a secretary of defense in the modern era who you think have done a good job? Who do you think were the best?
TRUMP: Well, because I know so many of them, and because in many cases I like them, I hate to get totally involved. I think George Shultz was very good, I thought he was excellent. I can tell you, I think your last secretary of state and your current secretary of state have not done much. I think John Kerry’s deal with Iran is one of the worst things that I’ve ever seen negotiated of any kind. It’s just a horrible giveaway.
HIATT: What in particular?
TRUMP: Well, I think, number one, we shouldn’t have given the money back. I think, number two, we should have had our prisoners before the negotiations started. We should have doubled up the sanctions. We should have gone in and said, ‘release our prisoners,’ they would have said ‘no,’ and we would have said, ‘double up the sanctions,’ and within a short period of time we would have had our prisoners back. And I think that was a terrible mistake. I think giving the money back was a terrible mistake. And by the way they are not using the money on us, they are not buying anything from us, they’re buying, you noticed, they didn’t buy Boeing, they bought Airbus, 118 planes from what I understand, but they bought them all from Airbus, they go out of their way not to spend any money in our country. So I wouldn’t have done that. And I think it’s going to just lead, actually, to nuclear problems. I also think it’s going to be bad for Israel. It’s a very bad deal for Israel.
Point for Trump. Anyone who defends the Iran deal is either deluded or an Iran sympathizer.
HIATT: George Shultz, it’s interesting, was associated with a foreign policy of Reagan that was very much devoted to promoting democracy and freedom overseas. Is that something you think in today’s world the United States should be doing?
TRUMP: I do think it’s a different world today and I don’t think we should be nation building anymore. I think it’s proven not to work. And we have a different country than we did then. You know we have 19 trillion dollars in debt. We’re sitting probably on a bubble and, you know, it’s a bubble that if it breaks is going to be very nasty. And I just think we have to rebuild our country. If you look at the infrastructure — I just landed at an airport where, not in good shape, not in good shape. If you go to Qatar and if you go to (inaudible) you see airports the likes of which you have never seen before. Dubai, different places in China. You see infrastructure, you see airports, other things, the likes of which you have never seen here.
Sound familiar? Remember Barack Obama’s stimulus and all those shovel-ready projects that weren’t? I have yet to read credible calls for rebuilding infrastructure because those calls don’t ever include what we will not do in exchange for spending more on infrastructure. Moreover, which infrastructure is more important — roads or broadband?
HIATT: Short of nation building, is there any role in promoting values or democracy? Or that’s not something…
TRUMP: Well, there is, I just think that we have values in our country that we have to promote. We have a country that is in bad shape, it’s in bad condition. You look at our inner cities, our inner cities are a horrible mess. I watched Baltimore, I have many, many friends in Baltimore, we watched what happened. St. Louis, Ferguson, Oakland, it could have been much worse over the summer. And it will probably be worse this summer. But you look at some of our inner cities. And yet you know I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’d be blown up. And we’d build another one and it would get blown up. And we would rebuild it three times. And yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn. We have no money for education, because we can’t build in our own country. And at what point do you say hey, we have to take care of ourselves. So, you know, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that but at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially in the inner cities.
Notice how Trump answers the question he wants to answer instead of the question he’s asked.
HIATT: So what would you do for Baltimore, let’s say.
TRUMP: Well, number one, I’d create economic zones. I’d create incentives for companies to move in. I’d work on spirit because the spirit is so low, it’s incredible, the unemployment, you look at unemployment for black youth in this country, African American youth, is 58-59 percent. It’s unthinkable. Unemployment for African Americans – not youth, but African Americans – is very high. And I would create in the inner cities, which is what I really do best, that’s why when I open a building and I show you it’s way ahead of schedule, under budget and everything else—I think it was the Rite Aid store, the store in Baltimore it took them 20 years to get it built, one store, and then it burned down in one night—we have to create incentives for people to love what they are doing, and to make money. And to create, you know, to really create a better life for themselves. And you can’t – it doesn’t seem right that you will have a situation like Baltimore, and many other places, let’s use Baltimore as an example, there are many Baltimores in this country. Detroit is maybe even a better example than Baltimore. But that you’ll have a situation like that, and then we’re over nation building with other, with countries that in many cases don’t want us there. They want our money, but they don’t want us.
HIATT: The root of many people’s unhappiness in Baltimore was the perception that blacks are treated differently by law enforcement. And the disproportionate – do you think it’s a problem that the percentage of blacks in prison is higher than whites, and what do you think is the root of that situation?
TRUMP: Well I’ve never really see anything that – you know, I feel very strongly about law enforcement. And, you know, if you look at the riot that took place over the summer, if that were stopped – it all, it mostly took place on the first evening, and if that were stopped on the first evening, you know, you’d have a much nicer city right now, because much of that damage and much of the destruction was done on Evening One. So I feel that law enforcement, it’s got to play a big role. It’s got to play a big role. But that’s a pretty good example, because tremendous amounts of damage was done that first evening – first two evenings, but the first evening in particular. And so I’m a very strong believer in law enforcement, but I’m also a very strong believer that the inner cities can come back.
HIATT: Do you see any racial disparities in law enforcement – I mean, what set it off was the Freddie Gray killing, as you know. Is that an issue that concerns you?
TRUMP: Well, look, I mean, I have to see what happens with the trial. I—
HIATT: Well, forget Freddie Gray, but in general, do you believe there are disparities in law enforcement?
TRUMP: I’ve read where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t. I mean, I’ve read both. And, you know, I have no opinion on that. Because frankly, what I’m saying is you know we have to create incentives for people to go back and to reinvigorate the areas and to put people to work. And you know we have lost million and millions of jobs to China and other countries. And they’ve been taken out of this country, and when I say millions, you know it’s, it’s tremendous. I’ve seen 5 million jobs, I’ve seen numbers that range from 6 million to, to smaller numbers. But it’s many millions of jobs, and it’s to countries all over. Mexico is really becoming the new China. And I have great issue with that. Because you know I use in speeches sometimes Ford or sometimes I use Carrier – it’s all the same: Ford, Carrier, Nabisco, so many of the companies — they’re moving to Mexico now. And you know we shouldn’t be allowing that to happen. And tremendous unemployment, tremendous. They’re allowing tremendous people that have worked for the companies for a long time, they’re allowing, if they want to move around and they want to work on incentives within the United States, that’s one thing, but when they take these companies out of the United States. Other countries are outsmarting us by giving them advantages, you know, like in the case of Mexico. In the case of many other countries. Like Ireland is, you’re losing Pfizer to Ireland, a great pharmaceutical company that with many, many jobs and it’s going to move to Ireland.
So Trump answers a question about racial disparities in law enforcement (yes? no? sometimes?) with companies moving their corporate headquarters overseas. (About which he should be able to comment as to why that’s bad and what he would do about it.)
RUTH MARCUS, COLUMNIST: But Mr. Trump, if I could just follow up on Fred’s question. I think that what he was trying to get at was the anger in the African American community that held some of the riots and disturbances this summer about disparate treatment and about … clearly you say you’ve read where there is disparate treatment. But it is pretty undeniable that there is disproportionate incarceration of African Americans vs. whites. What would you – is that something that concerns you?
TRUMP: That would concern me, Ruth. It would concern me. But at the same time it can be solved to a large extant with jobs. You know, if we can rebuild those communities and create incentives for companies to move in and create jobs. Jobs are so important. There are no jobs. There are none. You go to those communities and you can’t – there is nothing there. There is no incentive for people. It is a very sad situation. And what makes it even sadder is that we are spending so much money in other countries and our own country has vast pockets of poverty and a lot of this is caused by the fact that there are no jobs. So we can create jobs in places like Baltimore and Detroit. You know, Detroit made a move, but I don’t know but it just seems to be fizzling. I don’t know what is going on. I watched Detroit four, five years ago and it looked like they were really putting a full-court press on and it doesn’t seem to be, from what I’ve been told, friends of mine that are very much involved in that whole process that it doesn’t seem to be, doesn’t seem to be something that is being pursued like it should be pursued. But if we can create jobs, it will solve so many problems.
Not only does this not answer the question, but it’s not even a satisfactory answer for Republican-leaning voters. How about law and order? (The victims of crimes committed by blacks are, much more often than not, other blacks.) How about too many laws, or enforcing the wrong laws?
CHARLES LANE, EDITORIAL WRITER/COLUMNIST: Can I follow up on that? I mean, to take the case of Baltimore, I mean one of the things that’s so remarkable about Baltimore and Detroit is that both of these cities, like many others have been – it’s not as if no one has ever said before we should have economic zones, it’s not as if no one has ever said before we need incentives and taxes etc., etc. And Baltimore received a lot of federal aid over the years. So I guess the question, then, is what’s different specifically about your approach to these issues from what’s been tried in the past, because a lot of effort has been put in just the direction you just described.
TRUMP: I think what’s different is we have a very divided country. And whether we like it or not, it’s divided as bad as I’ve ever seen it. I’ve been, you know, I’ve been doing things for a long time. I see it all the time. I mean I see it so often. I see it when we go out and we have 21,000 people in Phoenix, Arizona, the other day, the division – not so much Phoenix, because that was actually very smooth, there wasn’t even a minor, they did block a road, but after that, that was Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when the road was unblocked everyone left and it was fine. But in Tucson, you can see the division. You can see the division. There’s a racial division that’s incredible actually in the country. I think it’s as bad, I mean you have to say it’s as bad or almost as bad as it’s ever been. And there’s a lack of spirit. And one thing I thought that would happen, and it hasn’t happened, unfortunately, I thought that President Obama would be a great cheerleader for the country. And it just hasn’t happened. I mean we can say it has. But it hasn’t happened. When you look at the Ferguson problems and the Baltimore problems and the Detroit problems. And you know there’s a lack of spirit. I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader – beyond other things, the other things that I’d do – I actually think I’d be a great cheerleader for the country. Because a lot of people feel it’s a hopeless situation. A lot of people in the inner cities they feel that way. And you have to start by giving them hope and giving them spirit and that has not taken place. Just has not taken place.
RYAN: Mr. Trump, you’ve mentioned many times during the campaign, in fact including this morning, instances you feel where the press has been biased or unfair or outright false in their reporting, and you’ve mentioned that you want to “open up” the libel laws. You’ve said that several times.
TRUMP: I might not have to, based on Gawker. Right?
[CROSSTALK]
TRUMP: That was an amazing—
RYAN: My question is not so much why you feel they should be open but how. What presidential powers and executive actions would you take to open up the libel laws?
TRUMP: Okay, look, I’ve had stories written about me – by your newspaper and by others – that are so false, that are written with such hatred – I’m not a bad person. I’m just doing my thing – I’m, you know, running, I want to do something that’s good. It’s not an easy thing to do. I had a nice life until I did this, you know. This is a very difficult thing to do. In fact I’ve always heard that if you’re a very successful person you can’t run for office. And I can understand that. You’ll do a hundred deals, and you’ll do one bad one or two bad ones — that’s all they read about are the bad ones. They don’t read about the one hundred and fifty great ones that you had. And even some of the ones they write that are good, they make them sound bad. You know, so I’ve always heard that. I’ve heard that if you’re successful – very successful – you just can’t run for—
RYAN: But how would you fix that? You’ve said that you would open up the libel laws.
TRUMP: What I would do, what I would do is I’d – well right now the libel laws, I mean I must tell you that the Hulk Hogan thing was a tremendous shock to me because – not only the amount and the fact that he had the victory — because for the most part I think libel laws almost don’t exist in this country, you know, based on, based on everything I’ve seen and watched and everything else, and I just think that if a paper writes something wrong — media, when I say paper I’m talking about media. I think that they can do a retraction if they’re wrong. They should at least try to get it right. And if they don’t do a retraction, they should, they should you know have a form of a trial. I don’t want to impede free press, by the way. The last thing I would want to do is that. But I mean I can only speak for – I probably get more – do I, I mean, you would know, do I get more publicity than any human being on the earth? Okay? I mean, [Editor’s note: Trump points at Ruth Marcus] she kills me, this one – that’s okay, nice woman.
RYAN: Would you expand, for example, prior restraints against publications?
TRUMP: No, I would just say this. All I want is fairness. So unfair. I have stories and you have no recourse, you have no recourse whatsoever because the laws are really impotent.
MARCUS: So in a better world would you be able to sue me?
TRUMP: In a better world — no — in a better world I would be able to get a retraction or a correction. Not even a retraction, a correction.
RYAN: Well, now, you’ve been a plaintiff in libel suits so you know a little bit of the elements …
TRUMP: I had one basic big libel suit, it was a very bad system, it was New Jersey. I had a great judge, the first one, and I was going to win it. And then I had another good judge, the second one, and then they kept switching judges. And the third one was a bad judge. That’s what happened. But, uh…
RYAN: But there’s standards like malice is required. Would you weaken that? Would you require less than malice for news organizations?
TRUMP: I would make it so that when someone writes incorrectly, yeah, I think I would get a little bit away from malice without having to get too totally away. Look, I think many of the stories about me are written badly. I don’t know if it’s malice because the people don’t know me. When Charles writes about me or when Ruth writes about me, you know, we’ve never really met. And I get these stories and they’re so angry and I actually say, I actually say, “How could they write?” – and many stories I must tell you, many stories are written that with a brief phone call could be corrected before they’re written. Nobody calls me.
STEPHEN STROMBERG, EDITORIAL WRITER: How are you defining “incorrect?” It seems like you’re defining it as fairness or your view of fairness rather than accuracy.
TRUMP: Fairness, fairness is, you know, part of the word. But you know, I’ve had stories that are written that are absolutely incorrect. I’ll tell you now and the word “intent”, as you know, is an important word, as you know, in libel. I’ll give you an example. Some of the media, not all of it, but some of it, is very, very strong on – you know I get these massive crowds of people, and we’ll get protesters. And these protesters are honestly, they’re very bad people. In many cases, they’re professionals. Highly trained professionals. And I will rent an arena for 20,000 seats and they will come in – because there’s really no way – how you going to be able to tell – somebody said “oh you shouldn’t let ‘em in” – how you gonna know, you know? They walk in. [Inaudible] So we had an incident this weekend, which was amazing in Tucson, Arizona where a man, a protestor, wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit, another one dragging an American flag, was walking out of the arena, and an African American man who was a supporter was sitting there listening to the speech and we had to stop because they were so loud – they’re so loud, these people, I don’t know what they do, they’re trained voices or something. And they’re walking up and you saw it, because it was all over television, and the African American man became incensed I think the guy said something to him like you know what, like “screw you,” okay? Or worse. I think, because he looked over to him and said something to him and the guy just had it. Now, they were together, these two. The one wearing a Ku Klux Klan, the other dragging a flag or something, but the African American man, who I think was an Air Force person, I just read he had a pretty stellar life so far. And he just became incensed. So when I saw the television yesterday early in the morning I saw the Ku Klux Klan, I saw exactly what happened. By the time it got on to the national shows that was for the most part taken out. They just had this African American smacking, you know, fighting. And it didn’t make sense, you know, why, why. But if you saw it in the morning it made a lot more sense. We don’t condone violence at all but it’s very, very unfair reporting and we, you know…
HIATT: Sorry, when you say we don’t condone violence —
TRUMP: I say that.
HIATT: You say that. But you’ve also said, “In the good old days, he would have been ripped out of his seat so fast, you wouldn’t believe it.” Isn’t that condoning violence?
TRUMP: No, because what I am referring to is, we’ve had some very bad people come in. We had one guy — and I said it — he had the voice — and this was what I was referring to — and I said, “Boy, I’d like to smash him.” You know, I said that. I’d like to punch him. This guy was unbelievably loud. He had a voice like Pavarotti. I said if I was his manager I would have made a lot of money for him, because he had the best voice. I mean, the guy was unbelievable, how loud he was. And he was a swinger. He was hitting people. He was punching and swinging and screaming — you couldn’t make — so you have to stop. You know, there is also something about the First Amendment, but you had to stop. And, so, this one man was very violent and very loud. And when he was being taken out, he walked out like this, with his finger way up, like, “screw everybody.” And that’s when I made that statement. He was absolutely out — I mean, he hit people and he screamed and then he was walking out and he’s giving everybody the finger. And they don’t talk about that. See, they don’t talk about that. They say, “Donald, wait a second, Donald, don’t” —
HIATT: But your answer is you condone violence when the guy is really egregious and terrible?
TRUMP: No, I condone strong law and order. I’ll tell you what they —
HIATT: Rip him out of his seat, punch him in the face, isn’t that violent?
TRUMP: Well he punched other people.
HIATT: No, I understand that.
TRUMP: Fred, he punched other people. He was punching people. He was — one guy was, you know, I’d like to say —
JO-ANN ARMAO, ASSOCIATE EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: The Fayetteville protester who was sucker punched — he didn’t punch anyone —
TRUMP: No.
ARMAO: He was being escorted from police, and he was sucker punched.
TRUMP: No. When are you talking about? When?
ARMAO: In Fayetteville.
COREY LEWANDOWSKI, TRUMP 2016 CAMPAIGN MANAGER [to Trump]: North Carolina.
TRUMP: I don’t know. I don’t know which one.
ARMAO: Yes you do.
TRUMP: I don’t know. Because we’ve had so many —
ARMAO: That’s the gentleman you said you were going to look into to see whether or not to pay his legal fees.
TRUMP: Oh well that’s a different — that’s different from the one I’m talking about. This one was about a month ago. This one was before Fayetteville.
ARMAO: Well, okay, Fayetteville, do you condone violence in that case —
TRUMP: No I don’t, no I don’t, that’s different —
ARMAO: Where the protester is being walked out —
TRUMP: By the way, that’s different —
ARMAO: But, yet, you explained it that he was giving the finger and so he provoked it, so he got sucker punched. And you are going to possibly pay for his legal expenses.
TRUMP: He did give the finger, and —
ARMAO: So that’s okay?
TRUMP: Well, a lot of people don’t — you know, the finger means, “F you.” A lot of people think — and you have children there, you have a lot of children that go, you know, they go with their parents — a lot of people think that’s very inappropriate. I mean, you know —
ARMAO: It’s certainly inappropriate.
TRUMP: Well, I think it is.
ARMAO: But does it — is it — does it qualify to —
TRUMP: So do you let him —
ARMAO: — to punch him in the face?
TRUMP: Again I don’t condone it. So do you let him walk out, he’s holding up his finger, telling everybody. Same thing happened, you know, the last one in —
HIATT: I guess the question is, when you then offer to pay the guy’s legal fees, isn’t that —
TRUMP: I didn’t offer —
HIATT: Isn’t that condoning?
TRUMP: No, I didn’t offer, Fred —
HIATT: You said you would consider it —
TRUMP: I said I want to look into it. I said I want to look into it. I didn’t say that.
HIATT: Isn’t that condoning?
TRUMP: No, I don’t think so.
HIATT: Doesn’t that convey a message of approval?
TRUMP: Don’t think so.
LEWANDOWSKI: To be fair, before every event, there is a public service announcement made about —
TRUMP: It’s true.
LEWANDOWSKI: — any potential protesters. That is made to everybody that says —
TRUMP: Strong.
LEWANDOWSKI: — please do not engage these protesters. You know, they may cause a disturbance. Please do your best, let local law enforcement handle this or security at that venue. The problem becomes, with a massive crowd of twenty or thirty or forty thousand people, the resources that are there don’t have the ability to get to all these people in a manner before the crowd reacts, because the agitators are inciting those people. So we are very clear at the onset, that there is a loud public notice that says, “please do not engage these people, please let them do their job, and let the local law enforcement deal with that.” That’s said at the very front end at every event.
TRUMP: Very loud, and it’s repeated over and over. Actually, I guess it’s on tape, but they repeat it over and over. One thing that was interesting this weekend. We had in Phoenix, Arizona, we had an interesting incident. We had people, we had a major highway coming into the arena. It’s not an arena, it’s a huge open space, 60 acres, and it was packed. And we had a major highway coming in, and people — protesters — stopped their car in the middle of the highway, chained themselves to their cars, and the cars — blocked. They were there for a while. A car was not able to move. They were backed up for 20 — I mean, like, just forever. And, it was terrible. And they were very abusive, screaming, you know, “screw you, screw you, pigs, pigs” — meaning to the cops. Sheriff Joe Arpaio — now that was his territory. Okay, he’s a tough cookie. Sheriff Joe saw this, he gave them a couple of minutes to move their car — they didn’t move them — cut the chains, arrested the people and just moved the cars over. I don’t know how they did it — just, they were gone in minutes after he came there. Minutes. It was amazing how quick. They actually had chains around their necks. They didn’t even know why they were there. People – somebody was interviewed, “Why are you here?” “Well, I don’t know, I’m not sure.” They didn’t even know.
Nobody ever talks about these people. They say, “Oh, Trump had a bad rally,” or something. You know there are two sides to it, and honestly, there is really one side of it – because you see how bad this was. So what happened is they arrested three people. There were probably a hundred or a hundred-fifty protesters, there were 21,000 people there, there were 150 protesters that were creating havoc. As soon as the three people were arrested, everybody else ran. That was the last we heard, and I made a speech for, you know, a half hour, 45 minutes – not one person stood up and started screaming at this speech. It was sort of an amazing thing.
Now Tucson was different. Different police force, different level of, you know, whatever, and we had numerous interruptions during the speech. You know, I’ll be speaking, I’ll be ready to make a point, and a guy will stand up and start, just screaming. Out of — from nowhere, for, like, no reason. Not even screaming things that make sense, and often screaming tremendous obscenities.
I know [Lewandowski] went in – he took a lot of heat a couple of days ago in that same rally because he went in to get – to quiet people down, and they had a couple of signs “F-you” – it just said “F-you,” meaning the word spelled out, and you have cameras there, you know, it’s on live television, and you have guys holding signs saying “F-you Trump” or just “F-you,” and they had numerous of those – there were, you know, probably ten of those signs throughout the arena.
And he went in to say, please would you move the sign, and the woman in front – and I saw it – this guy grabbed the woman in front, okay, he [Lewandowski] hardly touched him – he took him – If he touched him at all it was just grabbing the shirt a little bit. But the guy was a real wiseguy. And he was screaming obscenities. He did grab the woman in front and ultimately he was led out by the security guy, who was right behind him.
But the reason is that the police were slow to get there. And the point is this: You’re making a speech and you have guys getting up saying, [Editor’s note: Trump says the next few words in a hushed voice] “fuck you,” and the whole place goes, “Whoa,” and it incites the place. They incite the place, because then everyone goes, “USA, USA.” That’s why they’re all screaming “USA, USA,” or “Trump, Trump, Trump.”
You can have 20,000 people and you can have like two people. Usually – it’s amazing – usually it’s one person. I mean, it’s like they stage it. It’s very professional. They have like one person here, one person here, one person.
Okay, we’re talking about the media. So, I’ve never seen the media cover it from that angle. It’s always, “Trump had a” — and here’s the big thing, I mean, honestly, essentially nobody has heard
HIATT: But just – given the Supreme Court rulings on libel — Sullivan v. New York Times — how would you change the law?
TRUMP: I would just loosen them up.
RUTH MARCUS: What does that mean?
[Crosstalk]
TRUMP: I’d have to get my lawyers in to tell you, but I would loosen them up. I would loosen them up. If The Washington Post writes badly about me – and they do, they don’t write good – I mean, I don’t think I get – I read some of the stories coming up here, and I said to my staff, I said, “Why are we even wasting our time? The hatred is so enormous.” I don’t know why. I mean, I do a good job. I have thousands of employees. I work hard.
I’m not looking for bad for our country. I’m a very rational person, I’m a very sane person. I’m not looking for bad. But I read articles by you, and others. And, you know, we’ve never – we don’t know each other, and the level of hatred is so incredible, I actually said, “Why am I – why am I doing this? Why am I even here?” And I don’t expect anything to happen–
RYAN: Would that be the standard then? If there is an article that you feel has hatred, or is bad, would that be the basis for libel?
TRUMP: No, if it’s wrong. If it’s wrong.
RYAN: Wrong whether there’s malice or not?
TRUMP: I mean, The Washington Post never calls me. I never had a call, “Why – why did you do this?” or “Why did you do that?” It’s just, you know, like I’m this horrible human being. And I’m not. You know, the one thing we have in common I think we all love the country. Now, maybe we come at it from different sides, but nobody ever calls me. I mean, Bob Costa calls about a political story – he called because we’re meeting senators in a little while and congressmen, supporters – but nobody ever calls.
RYAN: The reason I keep asking this is because you’ve said three times you’ve said we are going to open up the libel laws and when we ask you what you mean you say hatred, or bad–
TRUMP: I want to make it more fair from the side where I am, because things are said that are libelous, things are said about me that are so egregious and so wrong, and right now according to the libel laws I can do almost nothing about it because I’m a well-known person you know, etc., etc.
The libel and slander laws do not need to be changed because Trump feels he has been treated unfairly by the media.
JACKSON DIEHL, DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: Back to foreign policy a little bit, can you talk a little bit about what you see as the future of NATO? Should it expand in any way?
TRUMP: Look, I see NATO as a good thing to have – I look at the Ukraine situation and I say, so Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet we are doing all of the lifting, they’re not doing anything. And I say, why is it that Germany is not dealing with NATO on Ukraine? Why is it that other countries that are in the vicinity of the Ukraine not dealing with — why are we always the one that’s leading, potentially the third world war, okay, with Russia? Why are we always the ones that are doing it? And I think the concept of NATO is good, but I do think the United States has to have some help. We are not helped. I’ll give you a better example than that. I mean, we pay billions– hundreds of billions of dollars to supporting other countries that are in theory wealthier than we are.
DIEHL: Hundreds of billions?
TRUMP: Billions. Well if you look at Germany, if you look at Saudi Arabia, if you look at Japan, if you look at South Korea — I mean we spend billions of dollars on Saudi Arabia, and they have nothing but money. And I say, why? Now I would go in and I would structure a much different deal with them, and it would be a much better deal. When you look at the kind of money that our country is losing, we can’t afford to do this. Certainly we can’t afford to do it anymore.
DIEHL: About Ukraine, was it right for the United States to impose sanctions on Russia when they invaded Crimea and would you keep those sanctions on them?
TRUMP: I think the answer is yes, it was, but I don’t see other people doing much about it. I see us doing things about it, but I don’t see other people doing much about it.
DIEHL: And could I ask you about ISIS, speaking of making commitments, because you talked recently about possibly sending 20 or 30,000 troops and—
TRUMP: No I didn’t, oh no no no, okay, I know what you’re saying. There was a question asked to me. I said that the military, the generals have said that 20- to 30,000. They said, would you send troops? I didn’t say send 20,000. I said, well the generals are saying you’d need because they, what would it take to wipe out ISIS, I said pretty much exactly this, I said the generals, the military is saying you would need 20- to 30,000 troops, but I didn’t say that I would send them.
DIEHL: If they said that, would you go along with that and send the troops?
TRUMP: I find it hard to go along with—I mention that as an example because it’s so much. That’s why I brought that up. But a couple of people have said the same thing as you, where they said did I say that and I said that that’s a number that I heard would be needed. I would find it very, very hard to send that many troops to take care of it. I would say this, I would put tremendous pressure on other countries that are over there to use their troops and I’d give them tremendous air supporters and support , because we have to get rid of ISIS, okay, just so — we have to get rid of ISIS. I would get other countries to become very much involved.
DIEHL: What about China and the South China Sea. What do you think they’re up to and—
TRUMP: I think it’s a terrible situation, I think it’s terrible they have no respect for–
DIEHL: –and what should we do about it?
TRUMP: Well look, we have power over China and people don’t realize it. We have trade power over China. I don’t think we are going to start World War III over what they did, it affects other countries certainly a lot more than it affects us. But—and honestly, you know part of—I always say we have to be unpredictable. We’re totally predictable. And predictable is bad. Sitting at a meeting like this and explaining my views and if I do become president, I have these views that are down for the other side to look at, you know. I hate being so open. I hate when they say — like I said get rid of the oil, keep the oil, different things over the years, when people are saying what would you do with regard to the Middle East, when we left — We should have never been in Iraq. It was a horr- it was one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of our country. We then got out badly, then after we got out, I said, “Keep the oil. If we don’t keep it Iran’s going to get it.” And it turns out Iran and ISIS basically—
HIATT: How do you keep it without troops, how do you defend the oil?
TRUMP: You would… You would, well for that– for that, I would circle it. I would defend those areas.
HIATT: With U.S. troops?
TRUMP: Yeah, I would defend the areas with the oil. And I would have taken out a lot of oil. And, uh, I would have kept it. I mean, I would have kept it, because, look: Iran has the oil, and they’re going to have the oil, well, the stuff they don’t have, because Iran is taking over Iraq as sure as you’re sitting there. And I’ve been very good on this stuff. My prognostications, my predictions have become, have been very accurate, if you look.
HIATT: So what do you think China’s aims are in the South China Sea?
TRUMP: Well I know China very well, because I deal with China all the time. I’ve done very well. China’s unbelievably ambitious. China is, uh… I mean, when I deal with China, you know, I have the Bank of America building, I’ve done some great deals with China. I do deals with them all the time on, you know, selling apartments, and, you know, people say ‘oh that’s not the same thing.’ The level of… uh, the largest bank in the world, 400 million customers, is a tenant of mine in New York, in Manhattan. The biggest bank in China. The biggest bank in the world.
China has got unbelievable ambitions. China feels very invincible. We have rebuilt China. They have drained so much money out of our country that they’ve rebuilt China. Without us, you wouldn’t see the airports and the roadways and the bridges; I mean, the George Washington Bridge is like, that’s like a trinket compared to the bridges that they’ve built in China. We don’t build anymore, and it, you know, we had our day. But China, if you look at what’s going on in China, you know, they go down to seven percent or eight percent and it’s like a national catastrophe. Our GDP is right now zero. Essentially zero.
DIEHL: Could you use trade to cause them to retreat in the South China Sea?
TRUMP: I think so, yeah. I think so
DIEHL: What would you do?
TRUMP: We, well, you start making it tougher. They’re selling their products to us for… you know, with no tax, no nothing. By the way, we can’t deal with them, but they can deal with us. See, we are free trade. The story is, and I have so many people that deal with China –they can easily sell their product here. No tax, no nothing, just ‘come on, bring it all in, you know, bring in your apples, bring in everything you make’ and no taxes whatsoever, right? If you want to deal with China, it’s just the opposite. You can’t do that. In other words, if you want to, if you’re a manufacturer, you want to go into China? It’s very hard to get your product in, and if you get it in you have to pay a very big tax.
HIATT: So, if they occupied what the Japanese call the Senkaku Islands, is that something the United States…
TRUMP: Well, I, you know, again, I don’t like to tell you what I’d do, because I don’t want to… You understand what I’m saying, Fred? If I… Okay, if I say ‘Well, we should go in and do this or that or that,’ I don’t want to, I don’t want to sort of… red flag all over it. I do think this: It’s an unbelievable thing that they’ve done, it’s unbelievable aggression, it’s unbelievable lack of respect for this country.
HIATT: This theory of unpredictability, I want to push a little bit, I mean – there are many people who think that North Korea invaded South Korea precisely because Acheson wasn’t clear that we would defend South Korea. So I’m curious, does ambiguity sometimes have dangers?
TRUMP: Well I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example. President Obama, when he left Iraq, gave a specific date – we’re going to be out. I thought that was a terrible thing to do. And the enemy pulled back, because they don’t want die. Despite what you read, you know, they don’t want to die — and they just pulled back, and after we left, all hell broke out, right? And I’ll give you another example that I think was terrible: when they sent, a few months ago, they sent fifty troops in. You know, fifty elite troops. Now, why do we have to have a news conference to announce that we’re sending fifty troops? So those troops now have targets on their back. And…you shouldn’t do it. We’re so predictable: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re sending fifty troops into Iraq or Syria. And these are our elite troops. And they’re going to do this and that and that and this.” And those troops now are being hunted. If you didn’t send them, they wouldn’t – if you didn’t say that, they wouldn’t know. I mean, there are times when you just can’t be… You talk too much. We talk too much. I guess they thought that was good politically, to say we’re sending fifty troops? I don’t think it was good.
Trump is correct about the flaw of Obama’s leaving Iraq early, but one does not have a good relationship with allies by being unpredictable. Trump also seems to not grasp who loses in a trade war with China — American consumers.
LANE: Can I ask you…Just going back to NATO, because…
TRUMP: Yes.
LANE: As you know, the whole theory of NATO from the beginning was to keep the United States involved in the long term in Europe to balance, to promote a balance of power in that region so we wouldn’t have a repeat of World War I and World War 2. And it seems to be like what you’re saying is very similar to what President Obama said to Jeffrey Goldberg, in that we have allies that become free riders. So it seems like there’s some convergence with the president there. What concerns me about both is that to some extent it was always thought to be in our interest that we, yes, we would take some of the burden on, yes, even if the net-net was not 100 percent, even steven, with the Germans. So I’d like to hear you say very specifically, you know, with respect to NATO, what is your ask of these other countries? Right, you’ve painted it in very broad terms, but do you have a percent of GDP that they should be spending on defense? Tell me more. Because it’s not that you want to pull the U.S. out.
TRUMP: No, I don’t want to pull it out. NATO was set up at a differentfrom time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country. We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money. We’re borrowing money China, which is a sort of an amazing situation. But things are a much different thing. NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe but we’re spending a lot of money. Number 1, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed. I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved. And I think we bear the, you know, not only financially, we bear the biggest brunt of it. Obama has been stronger on the Ukraine than all the other countries put together, and those other countries right next door to the Ukraine. And I just say we have, I’m not even knocking it, I’m just saying I don’t think it’s fair, we’re not treated fair. I don’t think we’re treated fair, Charles, anywhere. If you look everything we have. You know, South Korea is very rich. Great industrial country. And yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do. We’re constantly, you know, sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games, doing other. We’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.
LANE: You know, well, they say and I think this is on public record, it’s basically 50 percent of the non-personnel cost is paid by South Korea and Japan.
TRUMP: 50 percent?
LANE: Yeah.
TRUMP: Why isn’t it 100 percent?
HIATT: Well I guess the question is, does the United States gain anything by having bases?
TRUMP: Personally I don’t think so. I personally don’t think so. Look. I have great relationships with South Korea. I have buildings in South Korea. But that’s a wealthy country. They make the ships, they make the televisions, they make the air conditioning. They make tremendous amounts of products. It’s a huge, it’s a massive industrial complex country. And —
HIATT: So you don’t think the US gains from being the force that sort of that helps keep the peace in the Pacific?
TRUMP: I think that we are not in the position that we used to be. I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country. And we’re a poor country now. We’re a debtor nation. How you going to get rid – let me ask you – how are you going get rid of $21 trillion in debt? You’re going to be at 21 trillion in a matter of minutes because of that new omnibus budget. So they passed that ridiculous omnibus budget. How you going to get rid of that debt. We’re spending that to protect other countries. We’re not spending it on ourselves. Because we have, we have armor-plated vehicles that are obsolete. The best ones are given to the enemy. We give them to our allies over in the Middle East. A bullet shot in the air and they immediately run and the enemy takes over. I have a friend whose son is in his third, his third tour over in Iraq. He’s over in, I mean he’s a very special kid, he’s a great kid. But he’s over in the Middle East, and, uh, Afghanistan, different parts of the Middle East, actually. And he said to me, I said to him what do you think. And he said, it’s so sad. He said the enemy has our equipment – the new version — and we have all the old version, and the enemy has our equipment, because they get into a fight with the so-called people like the Freedom Fighters, you know the whole Syrian deal, where we’re sending billions and billions of dollars worth, and they capture the equipment. In most cases the shots are fired and everybody leaves. And these are the people we’re backing. And we don’t know if it’s going to be another Saddam Hussein deal, in other words, let’s get rid of Assad with these people and these people end up being worse. Okay? But he said, they have better equipment. It’s our equipment. They have, I guess we send 2,300 Humvees over, all armor-plated. So we have wounded warriors, with no legs, with no arms, because they were driving in stuff without the armor. And the enemy has most of the new ones we sent over that they captured. And he said, it’s so discouraging when they see that the enemy has better equipment than we have – and it’s our equipment.
HIATT: I’d like to come back to the campaign. You said a few weeks ago after a family in Chicago gave some money to a PAC opposing you, you said, “They better watch out. They have a lot to hide.” What should they watch out for?
TRUMP: Look, they are spending vicious … I don’t even know these people. Those Ricketts. I actually said they ought to focus on the Chicago Cubs and, you know, stop playing around. They spent millions of dollars fighting me in Florida. And out of 68 counties, I won 66. I won by 20 points, almost 20 points. Against, everybody thought he was a popular sitting senator. I had $38 million dollars spent on me in Florida over a short period of time. $38 million. And, you know, the Ricketts, I don’t even know these people.
HIATT: So, what does it mean, “They better watch out”?
TRUMP: Well, it means that I’ll start spending on them. I’ll start taking ads telling them all what a rotten job they’re doing with the Chicago Cubs. I mean, they are spending on me. I mean, so am I allowed to say that? I’ll start doing ads about their baseball team. That it’s not properly run or that they haven’t done a good job in the brokerage business lately.
RYAN: Would you do that while you are president?
TRUMP: No, not while I am president. No, not while I’m president. That is two phases. Right now, look, you know, I went to a great school, I was a good student and all. I am an intelligent person. My uncle, I would say my uncle was one of the brilliant people. He was at MIT for 35 years. As a great scientist and engineer, actually more than anything else. Dr. John Trump, a great guy. I’m an intelligent person. I understand what is going on. Right now, I had 17 people who started out. They are almost all gone. If I were going to do that in a different fashion I think I probably wouldn’t be sitting here. You would be interviewing somebody else. But it is hard to act presidential when you are being … I mean, actually I think it is presidential because it is winning. And winning is a pretty good thing for this country because we don’t win any more. And I say it all the time. We do not win any more. This country doesn’t win. We don’t win with trade. We don’t win with … We can’t even beat ISIS. And by the way, just to answer the rest of that question, I would knock the hell out of ISIS in some form. I would rather not do it with our troops, you understand that. Very important. Because I think saying that is very important because I was against the war in Iraq, although they found a clip talking to Howard Stern, I said, “Well…” It was very unenthusiastic. Before they want in, I was totally against the war. I was against it for years. I actually had a delegation sent from the White House to talk to me because I guess I get a disproportionate amount of publicity. I was just against the war. I thought it would destabilize the Middle East, and it did. But we have to knock out ISIS. We are living like in medieval times. Who ever heard of the heads chopped off?
HIATT: Just back to the campaign. You are smart and you went to a good school. Yet you are up there and talking about your hands and the size of private …
TRUMP: No …
HIATT: … your private parts.
TRUMP: No, no. No, no. I am not doing that.
HIATT: Do you regret having engaged in that?
TRUMP: No, I had to do it. Look, this guy. Here’s my hands. Now I have my hands, I hear, on the New Yorker, a picture of my hands.
MARCUS: You’re on the cover.
TRUMP: A hand with little fingers coming out of a stem. Like, little. Look at my hands. They’re fine. Nobody other than Graydon Carter years ago used to use that. My hands are normal hands. During a debate, he was losing, and he said, “Oh, he has small hands and therefore, you know what that means.” This was not me. This was Rubio that said, “He has small hands and you know what that means.” Okay? So, he started it. So, what I said a couple of days later … and what happened is I was on line shaking hands with supporters, and one of supporters got up and he said, “Mr. Trump, you have strong hands. You have good-sized hands.” And then another one would say, “You have great hands, Mr. Trump, I had no idea.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I thought you were like deformed, and I thought you had small hands.” I had fifty people … Is that a correct statement? I mean people were writing, “How are Mr. Trump’s hands?” My hands are fine. You know, my hands are normal. Slightly large, actually. In fact, I buy a slightly smaller than large glove, okay? No, but I did this because everybody was saying to me, “Oh, your hands are very nice. They are normal.” So Rubio, in a debate, said, because he had nothing else to say … now I was hitting him pretty hard. He wanted to do his Don Rickles stuff and it didn’t work out. Obviously, it didn’t work too well. But one of the things he said was “He has small hands and therefore, you know what that means, he has small something else.” You can look it up. I didn’t say it.
MARCUS: You chose to raise it …
TRUMP: No, I chose to respond.
MARUS: You chose to respond.
TRUMP: I had no choice.
MARCUS: You chose to raise it during a debate. Can you explain why you had no choice?
TRUMP: I don’t want people to go around thinking that I have a problem. I’m telling you, Ruth, I had so many people. I would say 25, 30 people would tell me … every time I’d shake people’s hand, “Oh, you have nice hands.” Why shouldn’t I? And, by the way, by saying that I solved the problem. Nobody questions … I even held up my hands, and said, “Look, take a look at that hand.”
MARCUS: You told us in the debate ….
TRUMP: And by saying that, I solved the problem. Nobody questions. Everyone held my hand. I said look. Take a look at that hand.
MARCUS: You told us in the debate that you guaranteed there was not another problem. Was that presidential? And why did you decide to do that?
TRUMP: I don’t know if it was presidential, honestly, whether it is or not. He said, ‘Donald Trump has small hands and therefore he has small something else.’ I didn’t say that. And all I did is when he failed, when he was failing, when he was, when Christie made him look bad, I gave him the– a little recap and I said, and I said, and I had this big strong powerful hand ready to grab him, because I thought he was going to faint. And everybody took it fine. Whether it was presidential or not I can’t tell you. I can just say that what he said was a lie. And everybody, they wanted to do stories on my hands; after I said that, they never did. And then I held up the hand, I showed people the hand. You know, when I’ve got a big audience. So yeah, I think it’s not a question of presidential …
MARCUS: He said he regrets …
HIATT: Okay, let’s move on here. Let’s move on.
TRUMP: I did feel I should respond. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But I felt I should respond because everybody was talking about it.
RYAN: You [MUFFLED] mentioned a few minutes earlier here that you would knock ISIS. You’ve mentioned it many times. You’ve also mentioned the risk of putting American troop in a danger area. If you could substantially reduce the risk of harm to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out ISIS?
TRUMP: I don’t want to use, I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million dollars’ worth of negative ads on me. That’s putting [MUFFLED]…
RYAN: This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?
[CROSSTALK]
TRUMP: I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?
HIATT: Sure, then I’d like to let a couple of them get in questions.
LEWANDOWSKI: We have got five minutes, hard out.
HIATT: Okay.
TRUMP: Oh is it?
CORY: Yeah. You have a meeting you have to get to.
TRUMP: Okay we do.
ARMAO: I’m Jo-Ann Armao. I cover D.C. events. I want to ask you a question about what you think about D.C. voting rights or statehood.
TRUMP: Okay. I’ll talk about that.
TOM TOLES, EDITORIAL CARTOONIST: Tom Toles.
TRUMP: Hi, Tom.
LANE: I’m Charles …
TRUMP: Yes, I know Charles.
STROMBERG: Steve Stromberg, editorial writer.
TRUMP: Right.
MARCUS: Ruth Marcus.
TRUMP: Right.
RYAN: Fred Ryan.
TRUMP: Right, right.
DIEHL: Jackson Diehl.
TRUMP: Good.
JAMES DOWNIE: James Downie, digital opinions editor.
TRUMP: Hi, James.
MICHAEL LARABEE: Mike Larabee, I’m the op-ed editor.
TRUMP: Yes.
CHRISTINE EMBA: Christine Emba.
TRUMP: Hi, Christine.
JAMIE RILEY: Jamie Riley, letters and local opinions.
TRUMP: Good, yes, yes.
KAREN ATTIAH: Karen Attiah, deputy digital editor.
HIATT: Karen, you want to get a question in?
ATTIAH: Uh, yeah, I mean speaking again of the system of what a lot of people would say are some of the uglier components of your campaign; a lot of people have said you’ve been running a very divisive campaign as far as racial divides, you’ve noted you know your comments about Muslims, about Mexicans, immigrants and such. You have information that the country is becoming browner, is becoming younger, is becoming blacker. What in your vision of president, in your presidency, how would you bridge these divides and how will you address a– how are you going to run on a message of inclusion of all Americans?
TRUMP: Well, first of all, if you look at some polls that have come out, I’m doing very well with African Americans. I’m doing, actually if you look at the polls, a lot of the polls that came out, in the, um, what do they call it? Exit polls, like from Nevada and other places, I’m doing very well with Hispanics.
ATTIAH: I think some of the polls are saying you’re doing [in the] negatives.
TRUMP: We do, if it’s illegals, in other words, if it’s everybody, but people that are legally living here, I’m doing very well. In other words, people that are here, like Hispanics that are in the country, I’m doing very well. People that vote. Like people leaving voting booths and all, I’m doing very well with them. I want to be inclusive, but at the same time, people should come here legally. They should be here legally. And I think the reason I’m doing, that I will do well, especially once I get started, don’t forget I haven’t even focused on Hillary yet. And, and as you know, you know I’ve had polls that are against me, but I’ve had many polls that say I’d beat Hillary, but they’re not that, that, they don’t mean anything now because it’s too early. Because I haven’t hit her. I’ve only hit her once, and that was eight weeks ago, but, I haven’t started on Hillary yet, and when I do I think I’ll be able to make my points. I mean, you know, but, but I think that just to try and answer your question: Uh, I am the least racist person that you will ever meet. Okay. That I can tell you.
ATTIAH: But do you feel that your messages, your rhetoric, are dangerous and divisive for this country? How do you feel they’re ….
TRUMP: I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so. With the Muslim thing I think it’s a serious problem. I’ve had Muslims call and tell me you’re right with the Muslim thing, I think it’s a serious problem. And it’s a problem that has to be addressed. I mean, there’s tremendous hatred. Even the, even the guy they caught in Paris. He was being hid out by other Muslims, and everybody is after him, and he’s living right next to where he grew up. There’s a serious, serious problem with the Muslims and it’s got to be addressed. It’s temporary, and it’s got to be addressed. And you know you may think of it as negative. Many people think it’s very positive.
HIATT: How would you identify people to keep them out of this country?
TRUMP: Well look, there’s many exceptions. There’s many – everything, you’re going to go through a process. But we have to be very careful. And I was really referring in particular, you know, to migrations – Syrians, the whole migration, where we’re going to take in thousands. And I heard in the Democrat debate, I heard 55,000, okay. 55,000. Now they say it’s really ten [thousand], but it’s already 10, and I just don’t think we can take people into this country. You saw what two people did – the woman and the man, whether she radicalized him or [inaudible] – but you saw what two people did, and I just don’t think we can take people in when we have no idea who they are, where they come from. There’s no documents, there’s no paper, and we have ISIS looming over our head, and we have tremendous destruction. We lost the World Trade Center, we lost the Pentag – you know, we had a plane go into the Pentagon, etc.
ARMAO: D.C.: You told Chuck Todd last year on “Meet the Press” that you love D.C., you love the people, that you want to do what’s best for them. They think what’s best for them is statehood or at the very least voting rights. What is your position on those two things?
TRUMP: I think statehood is a tough thing for D.C. I think it’s a tough thing. I don’t have a position on it yet. I would form a position. But I think statehood is a tough thing for D.C.
ARMAO: Tough politically?
TRUMP: I think it’s just something that I don’t think I’d be inclined to do. I’d like to study it. It’s not a question really – maybe Chuck didn’t ask me like you’re asking me – I don’t see statehood for D.C.
ARMAO: What about having a vote in the House of Representatives?
TRUMP: I think that’s something that would be okay. Having representation would be okay.
HIATT: Last one: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?
TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.
STROMBERG: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?
TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.
Kevin D. Williamson explains the divide in the Republican Party, exposed by Donald Trump:
Jonah Goldberg argues persuasively that no matter what happens with Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations, his campaign spells the end of the Republican party as we know it, the GOP’s two main camps disunited by Trump’s illiterate populism. Divorce indeed seems imminent, which suggests another question: What ever kept them together in the first place?
There are policy fissures, class fissures, and social fissures in the Republican party, but the fundamental divide is one of mood: Aspiration Republican vs. Resentment Republicans.
Aspiration Republicans are familiar enough: They are deeply rooted in the classical-liberal principles of the American founding, they are in the main happy warriors in the Reagan-Kemp-Buckley tradition, they tend to see domestic social problems such as the recent race riots as bumps on the road to a more perfect union, and they tend to extend a fair amount of leeway to a decent guy making a buck. Their vices are a tendency to indulge Whig history and naïve universalism, believing that “the desire for freedom resides in every human heart,” as George W. Bush once put it. In reality, there are hearts of darkness.
And some of those hearts of darkness beat in notionally conservative chests. The Resentment Republicans are familiar enough, too. They may not be the progressive cartoon character (Headline: “How do shut down your right-wing uncle at Thanksgiving dinner!”), but there is a little of that in them. They tend to reject the classical liberalism of the American founding in favor of a more Continental, blood-and-soil/throne-and-altar nationalism. And that nationalism often isn’t quite national: Often it is merely tribal (“We the People vs. the Establishment,” as the talk-radio ranters have it), and often enough it is simply racial, a tendency that has been dramatically (even shockingly, for me, at least) revealed by the rallying of the white-nationalist element behind Trump, and Trump’s predictable footsie-playing with it.
The Resentment Republicans are not happy warriors; instead, they are apocalyptic. For them, Black Lives Matters isn’t a destructive and sometimes thuggish protest movement but the announcement of a pending race war; so is La Raza; so is the fact that East Podunk State U. offers an undergraduate degree in African-American studies. (“Where’s the white-studies degree? Huh? HUH!” You can hear it.) When somebody makes a buck — or a few more bucks than they have — they see conspiracy, favoritism, the hand of the wily Oriental, the sweaty Mexican, or the nefarious Jewish banker at work, depending on how far down that sorry road they’ve gone.
Resentment is a very powerful force. Every reasonably knowledgeable conservative has had that discussion about balancing the budget during which someone insists that foreign aid (a minuscule part of federal spending that is largely laundered back into the American economy through defense contracting) is what ails us. Or maybe it’s food stamps, or maybe it’s all the blacks and illegals on welfare. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, these explanations can serve any purpose. Social Security insolvent? “Cut off foreign aid and kick all those dusky malingerers off of welfare.” Federal employees sit around watching porn all day? “Yeah, but what about foreign-aid spending and all those job-stealing illegals on welfare?” Can’t figure out what to do about Syria? “Kick all those lazy blacks off welfare and Assad will take care of himself, and why are we worried about these goddamned rag-heads in the first place?”
(Sure, but I’m not exaggerating by much.)
The dispositional differences produce policy differences of course. Not only on the matter of trade, which Resentment Republicans regard as a scam, but also on things like criminal-justice reform. Hardline conservatives such as Rick Perry have come around to the view that a lot of what we are doing in the so-called war on drugs is destructive, and that we’d be better off pushing some offenders into treatment and other non-incarceration options. Resentment Republicans hate the idea of spending one thin dime on these degenerate drug addicts; remind them that keeping them in prison isn’t exactly cheap, either, and it’s back to foreign aid and the blacks on welfare. Even when the two sides agree, they disagree: A great many Aspiration Republicans oppose gay marriage or permitting homosexual couples to adopt children because they believe that traditional family is a natural part of human life and that traditional families produce happier, healthier children and societies. Resentment Republicans oppose gay marriage because those perverts are disgusting. For them, the political is very, very personal. The
Even when the two sides agree, they disagree: A great many Aspiration Republicans oppose gay marriage or permitting homosexual couples to adopt children because they believe that traditional family is a natural part of human life and that traditional families produce happier, healthier children and societies. Resentment Republicans oppose gay marriage because those perverts are disgusting. For them, the political is very, very personal. The GOP of 2016 is what happens when the Party of F. A. Hayek joins up with the Party of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Communism, crime, and a 70 percent income-tax rate were enough to keep them together in the post-war era, but now the Soviet Union is gone, violent crime has been reduced by half or more in most American cities, and the top income-tax rate is 39.6 percent — a rate hit by a married couple once their income brushes up against a half-million dollars a year. Which is to say, the Republican party has been a victim of conservatives’ success, halting and partial as those successes inevitably have been.
My own attitude toward the Republican party has been for some time like Winston Churchill’s attitude toward the Church of England: not a pillar by any means but a buttress, supporting it from the outside. The Republican party of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan was a party of peace, prosperity, and purpose. It thrived in the California sunshine that marked Reagan’s political disposition. It was born of a country with the confidence to issue the great challenge of the latter half of the 20th century: “Tear Down This Wall!” The Republican party of Donald Trump is something else, something that grows in darker, danker places where they dream of ever-taller walls, literal and metaphorical, behind which to cower. And if that is what the Republican party intends to be, I for one want no part of it.
Williamson certainly plays into anti-Republican stereotypes of his so-called Resentment Republicans. (Which is not to say they’re not accurate.) There is, however, a bigger problem with his thesis. While the GOP may be a mess at the presidential candidate level, notice that its control of the House of Representatives is only threatened by potential voter hatred of Trump, and over the past 35 years the GOP has controlled the Senate as often (1981–86, 1995–2006 and since 2015) than not.
Where do the 31 Republican governors fit in Williamson’s GOPs? What about the members and leadership of the 68 chambers of state legislatures the GOP controls? The GOP has total control of the executive and legislative branches of 23 states (including, of course, Wisconsin), while the Democratic Party has total control of the executive and legislative branches of only seven states. All of that was earned before The Donald. (Much of it was in reaction to Barack Obama’s overreaches, similar to the GOP tsunami of 1994, and, should Hillary Clinton become president, the next GOP tsunami in 2018.)
Parties, after all, are supposed to be about more than one candidate, even more than the candidate at the top of the ticket. The GOP did not collapse after the losses of George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain or Mitt Romney. I am pretty sure the GOP will survive Donald Trump, because (as I have stated here before) Trump is not a Republican, and Trump is more like the Republican Bernie Sanders than to any past Republican leader. Trump’s supporters may be Republicans (note I wrote “may be,” because they are more likely to be Democrats either voting in open primaries or switching party identification for the primary, and therefore they are no sure November GOP vote), but do you really think Trump Republicans will vote for Russ Feingold over Ron Johnson?
About the Resentment Republicans: The optimists are the candidates Americans almost always vote for, from president to city council. Hillary Clinton is Ms. Happy compared with thundercloud Comrade Sanders, and, like it or not, there is no likeability similarity between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. George W. Bush certainly came across better in public than either Al Gore or John Kerry. Even Richard Nixon was smart enough to have surrogates be Mr. Nasty in public. Why do you suppose Hillary Clinton has big leads over Trump in every poll conducted so far?
Today in 1964, the Beatles were the first pop stars to get memorialized at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum …

… while in the North Sea, the pirate Radio Caroline went on the air:
The number one British single today in 1970:
Today in 1958, CBS Records announced it had developed stereo records, which would sound like stereo only on, of course, stereo record players.
The irony is that CBS’ development aided its archrival, RCA, which owned NBC but also sold record players:
(For similar reasons NBC was the first network to do extensive color. NBC was owned by RCA, which sold TVs.)
The number one British single today in 1956 is an oxymoron, or describes an oxymoron:
Today in 1965, Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, Brian Jones and Bill Wyman were all shocked by a faulty microphone at a concert in Denmark. Wyman was knocked unconscious for several minutes.
The number one British single today in 1967:
Gary D’Amato starts our Sweet 16 trip today:
The day before the University of Wisconsin played Pittsburgh in the NCAA Tournament, Nigel Hayes ran into Michigan State coach Tom Izzo near the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
Hayes, the Badgers’ starting forward, asked Izzo what made the Spartans so good in March.
“Izzo told him it was the winning culture of their program,” UW guard Bronson Koenig said Tuesday. “It’s their (former players) calling their current guys and saying, ‘OK, it’s March. We’re going to do what Michigan State always does in March, and that’s win.’”
It’s impossible to quantify the value of a winning culture and how it fosters confidence in players, but it’s at least as important as solid fundamentals and maybe even talent.
“I would say,” Koenig said, “it’s THE most important thing.”
Like the Spartans, the Badgers have built a winning tradition on a foundation of 18 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and back-to-back Final Fours. When a program wins year after year, players develop a healthy conceit about success: We’re supposed to win, and we’ll find a way.
It helps to explain how Wisconsin is an incredible 138-5 over the last six years when leading or tied for the lead with 5 minutes left. This year, the Badgers are 21-1 in such games, the only blemish being an early-season loss to UW-Milwaukee.
“It’s a ridiculous winning percentage in those situations,” said Badgers assistant coach Lamont Paris. “It’s not chance. The other team has just as many chances to make those plays.”
It also helps to explain how Koenig just knew his step-back three-pointer off one leg from the corner against Xavier was going to go in before the ball even left his hand. It did, beating the buzzer and sending the Badgers to the Sweet 16 and a date with Notre Dame on Friday.
In crunch time, the Badgers have an unshakeable belief that they’re going to come out on top. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course, but it’s a quality that tips the odds in their favor.
“I think that’s why some teams that have struggled historically have a hard time getting over the hump,” Paris said. “I think a lot of times people think it’s purely talent: ‘If we get more talent, we’ll win more games.’ There is a correlation, don’t get me wrong. But as you win and you know that you can perform, I think you develop a belief that affects how you play down the stretch of a game.”
When things looked bleak against Pittsburgh and Xavier, the Badgers found a way to win. Koenig couldn’t buy a basket against Pitt but against Xavier he made a pair of three-pointers in the last 12 seconds — the first to tie, the second to win.
Only a player with a massive amount of confidence can go from ice cold to coldblooded in a span of two days.
“If you believe in yourself,” Koenig said, “your shots are going to go in.”
When younger teammates see that kind of self-assurance, it can’t help but rub off. Koenig and Hayes saw it in Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker; now, young teammates see it in them.
“From the bench, guys see, ‘Wow, these guys are making plays at (crunch) time. That’s what Badgers do,’” Paris said. “You’re not going to win every single one of them, but these guys really and truly think that they’re going to find a way to come out on top.”
By definition, Division I athletes are confident people. But there is a difference between confidence and a deep-seated belief that you’re going to make a play and that your team is going to win. The former can be broken, but not the latter.
“It’s true belief,” Paris said. “It’s not false confidence, which I think is another ball of wax. You’re the only one who knows in your brain what you really believe. No one else knows that. I think a lot of people don’t have true confidence. They’re going to tell you they’re confident. But to have true confidence is not that common.”
Speaking of not that common, there is Virginia coach and UW-Green Bay grad Tony Bennett, profiled a year ago by the Washington Post:
Tony Bennett had just become Virginia’s men’s basketball coach in 2009 when he visited guard Jontel Evans at his Hampton, Va., home and laid out his blueprint for the program. Evans had committed to Virginia’s previous coaching staff, so Bennett now had to re-recruit him.
His eyes lit up when he told Evans about the defense the Cavaliers would play. Evans said Bennett talked about recruiting under-the-radar players and developing them. The Cavaliers wouldn’t win because they were the most talented, but because they played as a team.
Bennett said one more thing to Evans as he was in the doorway and about to leave: “Live by faith, and not by sight.”
“Me and my mother looked at each other, and I was just like, ‘That’s really kind of deep, I’ve never heard it before,’ ” Evans said. “That’s what sold me. After that, I was like, ‘I want to play for this guy.’ ”
Bennett didn’t take shortcuts as he guided the Cavaliers to the top of college basketball, and he’s stayed true to his system as he tries to keep them there. He prefers blue-collar players over blue-chip recruits, with a style of play to match. …
Had Bennett been less experienced by the time he arrived at Virginia, he said he might have tried to recruit more junior college players when the wins didn’t come quickly. Maybe he would’ve changed his deliberately slower style of play when it was criticized for being boring.
But Bennett had played for his father, Dick Bennett, at Wisconsin-Green Bay and witnessed the same system work there and again later at a power-conference school, Wisconsin. When Tony Bennett got his first head coaching job, at Washington State, that system resulted in the most wins over any three-year period in program history. He figured patience would eventually produce the same results at Virginia even after the Cavaliers missed the NCAA tournament in his first two seasons.
“When you come in and you’re trying to establish a new program and a new system, you have to get the right kind of guys, but then it’s not quick-fix stuff,” Bennett said. “There’s kind of a process you have to go through, and you can’t short cut certain things. If you try to, it may give you a little bit of a spike or a blip on the radar, but it usually ends up hurting you.”
Some teams get those instant results by recruiting stars or “one-and-done” players who leave school for the NBA after one college season, but Bennett would’ve struggled luring a player of that caliber to Charlottesville early in his tenure. When he approached Ritchie McKay about joining his staff as associate head coach at Virginia, Bennett had a different vision, telling McKay he wanted to build a program that could compete at the highest level with high-character players.
Bennett put the program’s biblically-derived five pillars — humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness — on the wall of the locker room. The pillars were a creation of Dick Bennett, who once told McKay, a longtime friend, that he would “recruit to the pillars, hire from the pillars, make decisions and try to model his life after the pillars,” McKay said. Virginia players said the pillars are discussed and applied for basketball every day.
Bennett’s vision hit a speed bump when four of the six members of his first six-man recruiting class transferred. The Cavaliers were 31-31 after Bennett’s first two seasons, and Evans remembers Bennett telling the team that “a house divided cannot stand,” a reference to Mark 3:25, as a way to stress the importance of uniting.
“You’ve got to get a group of guys you can lose with first before you win,” Bennett said. “You’re going to go through tough losses, and it’s going to be hard, so you want the guys that will stay together and stay with it when it’s rocky and there’s some hard things. You learn from all that, and then as they mature, boy, there’s a chance for you to turn it around and taste success.” …
McKay said he doesn’t look at prospects’ national rankings when recruiting, but rather he evaluates them based on whether they would be a good fit for Bennett’s system, from an athletic standpoint and a willingness to be coached. Prioritizing defense is ingrained in early conversations with recruits.
Bennett can been turned off by a highly rated player if he senses entitlement. While some coaches promise playing time during the recruiting process, Bennett instead paints a bleak picture, as he only guarantees players an opportunity to earn minutes and candidly outlines their role on the team. Bennett said he looks for “blue-collar” players because the Cavaliers are that kind of program. Just one player who has committed to Virginia’s 2016 recruiting class, shooting guard Kyle Guy, is rated in ESPN’s top 50 for the class.
“We’re not a team that can go out and just get one and dones like Kentucky,” Bennett said. “Even if you can get those, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take one, but you better be able to back it up with another one and another one because all of those things create gaps in your program.”
Gill said Bennett frequently references 1 Corinthians 9:24: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
Gill said the Cavaliers have embraced that verse from a basketball standpoint, doing what’s necessary for the prize at the end of the season. But for Bennett, it’s an ongoing marathon.
“If we were fortunate enough to keep having success and all of a sudden we changed totally the kind of young men we brought in or went in a different direction, that would be a big mistake,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get more and more fortunate and find talented guys who have all of those attributes and are willing to keep building it, but it should definitely not change as long as I’m at the helm.”
I don’t know if this was prompted by seeing the sequel of the movie that inspired this …
… or finding this while looking for something two years newer …
… or even eating a cake with sweet green icing last weekend. For whatever reason, today’s subject is the strange, yet frequently recorded, “MacArthur Park,” written by prolific songwriter Jimmy Webb in the 1960s.
The 1960s was a uniquely experimental time in pop music, and this song is evidence. The original version is, like nearly all pop songs, written in 4/4 time, but includes 2/4 and 3/4 measures thrown in.
And then there’s the lyrics, about which Newsday wrote:
Many tales have evolved, in the media and online to explain the genesis of the song. Here are but a few:
* They’re a metaphor for the end of his relationship with a relative of Linda Ronstadt’s who later got married in that Los Angeles park on a rainy day.
* Webb was annoyed by British record executives, so he extended the song past seven minutes, something unheard of on AM radio.
* He bet Richard Harris a Rolls-Royce that he could write a No. 1 song for him.
* And not long ago, Simon Cowell supposedly said Webb had told a friend of his the song is about sex and drugs.
So which ideas are apocryphal, and are any true? We asked not only Webb but also his wife of a decade, Laura Savini.
“Well, it’s all true,” Webb says, laughing. “There are little bits and pieces of the true story there, but what I’ve resorted to, because it’s really turned into a kind of lifetime of talking about ‘MacArthur Park,’ whether I want to or not. My fallback position after all these years is I will tell you that I’ve told deliberately false stories to people.
“I’ve also tried to tell the truth, which is that it’s just a song about a girlfriend of mine, Susie Horton, and this place on Wilshire Boulevard where we used to have lunch, which is called MacArthur Park. And the truth is that everything in the song was visible. There’s nothing in it that’s fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it’s a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park.
“And I remember that that was also when I wrote ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ because this affair was winding down to a kind of dreary close, and I was thinking, ‘Well, I’ll just go back to Oklahoma,’ and so I wrote ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix.’ Of course, I never even got in the car and turned on the engine to go back to Oklahoma. But it’s related to ‘MacArthur Park’ in that sense. It comes from the same period when I was experiencing things and pretty much transferring them immediately into music.
“My writing technique, my style, is a lot different now, so in a way, it’s a lot more accessible and easier to understand. Back then, I was kind of like an emotional machine, like whatever was going on inside me would bubble out of the piano and onto paper.
“It was issued as rather a challenge to me from Bones Howe, who was the producer of The Association, that could I do an extended, classically oriented piece that could be played on the radio, and if I could, then ‘something that has different movements.’ So it was more his urging me than it was some spontaneous ‘Oh, gee, I think I’ll write a rock classical masterpiece.’”
Savini, a Public Television host-producer, is almost as good a storyteller as her renowned songwriting husband. Nearly five decades after the song’s release, she says she’s constantly getting queries about it.
“When people see he’s my husband,” she says, “that’s always the first question I get: ‘What’s “MacArthur Park” mean?’ And I always say it’s an abstract painting, an impressionist painting. It’s art, but in a musical form. You make it what you want it to be. Jimmy plays it down, but it’s a heartbreaking song when you listen to just him sing it and you hear all the words without all the orchestrations. It blows your mind — oh, my God, all the pain in that song.”
To underscore the song’s place in history — it finished No. 8 on WABC radio’s chart of 1968 hits — Savini notes that last year Webb’s picture appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times when he performed the song in the actual MacArthur Park.
Savini also proudly points out that an entire “Late Show With David Letterman” in July was devoted to the song. Paul Shaffer’s bassist, Will Lee, sang along with the show’s band and Webb at the harpsichord-piano keyboards — plus a 23-piece orchestra:
“This whole thing came about because David Letterman is a fan of Jimmy’s and loves the song. Instead of doing a Top 10 list, he did a whole segment of the show talking about ‘MacArthur Park’ and how he heard three versions on Sirius radio when he was with his son: the Richard Harris one, the Donna Summer version — which he said he had never heard before — and the Jimmy/Brian Wilson one, and he just went bonkers for the song.
“They rehearsed and planned this segment for months, and the producer said it’s maybe only the second time in history that David brought in a whole symphony orchestra. He made a huge deal of it. They called the whole night ‘MacArthur Park Night.’ They even had a big cake — with sweet, green icing — that Will Lee climbed at the end, playing the guitar and singing.
“The whole thing was a tiny bit tongue-in-cheek, but it was a huge tribute to the song and how much David liked it, and he wanted his son to understand the song. It was an unbelievable thing — everyone was so excited about it. We got a handwritten note from David a couple of days later thanking us and saying what an incredible experience it was for him.” …
“It’s very funny,” Savini recalls. “The song is gorgeous — it’ll give you the chills. And when I heard the track, I just looked at him and said, ‘Did you have an affair with her?’ Because you just hear this emotion of this heartbreak in the song — it’s really fantastic.” So how did Webb respond? “He said, ‘Noooo.’ But they’ve been good friends a long time.”
Letterman?
The first version that got to the radio was sung by actor Richard Harris, known for the musical “Camelot” popular during the John F. Kennedy administration.
Webb apparently wrote what Wikipedia describes as …
… four sections or movements:
- A mid-tempo introduction and opening section, called “In the Park” in the original session notes, is built around piano and harpsichord, with horns and orchestra added. This arrangement accompanies the song’s main verses and choruses.
- A slow tempo and quiet section follows, called “After the Loves of My Life.”
- An up-tempo instrumental section, called “Allegro,” is led by drums and percussion, punctuated by horn riffs, and builds to an orchestral climax.
- A mid-tempo reprise of the first section, concludes with the final choruses and climax.
… intending it for The Association, which decided that the song sounded nothing like “Cherish” or “Along Comes Mary.” But, as the Los Angeles Times reports, along came Harris instead:
He was invited to lend a musical hand at a fundraiser in East L.A., and there he met Richard Harris, the incorrigible Irish actor, who prowled the room like a lion with twinkling eyes. Harris wanted to sing old pub songs, and Webb played the piano, so soon they were unlikely drinking mates. “He liked vodka,” Webb recalled. “And I was out of my league. Way out of my league. He said to me, ‘Let’s make a record, Jimmy Webb.’ He only called me ‘Jimmy Webb,’ never just ‘Jimmy.’ ”
Webb, an Oklahoma native, enjoyed the escapade but expected nothing to come of it. Then he got a telegram: “Jimmy Webb, come to London and make a record. Love, Richard.”
Webb brought a satchel of sheet music with him and, over pitchers of Pimm’s Cup, the man who played King Arthur listened to each song, looking for just the right material for his pop music debut. Nothing clicked. Then Webb reached the bottom of the bag. “I looked down with some dread because there was only one thing left. I was down to ‘MacArthur Park.’ ” …
Webb played the song and his host’s eyes grew wide and dewy. “I’ll have that, Jimmy Webb!” Webb agreed, but with mixed feelings. He had written the song with aspirations of a pop symphony. But the young songwriter had grown skeptical of its merits. …
Webb had many more hits, but “MacArthur Park” remains his most polarizing song, and some days, he concedes, it feels “like a hump on my back.” Other moments he admires its youthful ambition. “I wish I had spent a little more time on the song. But who knew it was going to be this crazy thing? I can say I’m very glad that it wasn’t my last song.” Webb sighed. “I think this will be the last interview on that song. I’m going to move on.”
Even though the multiple-movement song was used by a lot of acts, including the Beatles …
… Queen …
… and Chicago:
… it was unusual for a song of this length to get on AM Top 40 radio, and it wasn’t likely to get played on FM radio because it’s not really a rock song. (At least not without accompanying controlled substances.) But “MacArthur Park” got to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy Award in 1969. On the other hand, the number one song in Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs is this one.
One year after Harris’ version hit number two came Waylon Jennings’ version …
… which got to number 23 on the Hot Country charts. I didn’t know about this version before I started writing this. I am surprised it got as far up as 23rd given its length — it’s about twice the length of a radio country song then or now. And if you think country songs of that era are gloomy, well, don’t listen to Jennings’ version with booze and a gun nearby.
Glen Campbell, who recorded several of Webb’s songs, had a version …
… as did the Four Tops:
Jennings’ version took out “Allegro.” What if you took only “Allegro” and made that a song?
Since I prefer the music part of songs to the words, I think “Allegro” is what got it on to top 40 radio in the first place. Take that out, and you have someone not exactly blessed with a singing voice warbling about, well, this:
Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the danceBetween the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pantsMacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rainI don’t think that I can fake it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh nooooooI recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees
Birds like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing checkers, by the treesMacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rainI don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo(Short instrumental interlude)
There would be another song for me
For I will sing it
There would be another dream for me
Someone will bring itI will drink the wine while it is warm
And never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life, you’ll still be the oneI will take my life into my hands and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
And my passion flow like rivers through the skyAnd after all the loves of my life
Oh, after all the loves of my life
I’ll be thinking of you – and wondering why(Longer instrumental interlude)
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rainI don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh noooooo, o-oh no-ooooo
Without “Allegro,” I can hear top 40 radio station music directors saying “Oh noooooo” to playing “MacArthur Park” in 1968.
Harris’ version was parodied by SCTV (which apparently preferred “Allegro” to the rest of the song, or was trying to induce a heart attack) years later:
Before the movie “Rocky” and its theme “Gonna Fly Now,” trumpet player Maynard Ferguson did a version:
Ten years after Harris hit the charts, Casablanca Records producer Giorgio Moroder started working with singer Donna Summer on a new album, “Live and More.”
“More” turned out to be the “MacArthur Park Suite” …
… which dispensed with Webb’s non-4/4 measures, but added two other songs, “One of a Kind” and “Heaven Knows,” to take Webb’s original seven-minute song to 18 minutes.
Summer’s single version, half the length of the original, got one position higher than Harris’ on the Billboard Hot 100, number one.
Some radio stations (including KFI in Los Angeles, where I heard it) played a longer version:
Everyone who has listened to contemporary hits radio for more than four hours knows that familiarity breeds contempt, particularly when something is a little strange. “MacArthur Park” may have been the song equivalent of a brilliant student who wears unfashionable (yet not hipster) clothing, or a beige Corvette, or something. (Obviously I lack the metaphorical writing ability of Webb.)
The song’s nearly three-octave range must make it a challenge for singers. (I have never heard it performed in karaoke, for, I’m sure, at least three reasons.) Maybe that’s why Sinatra and the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs went for it.
It would be interesting to hear an act like Guns N Roses try a version closer to Harris’ iteration. Power ballads were all over the radio in the ’80s, and that would describe three-fourths of “MacArthur Park.” And as for the fourth, well, if rock guitarists can’t figure out how to handle the “Allegro,” there is no hope for them.