Celebrity Apprentice star and financial magnate Donald Trump will be giving his endorsement to Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential race, according to sources in the GOP. The official Donald Trump endorsement of Mitt Romney will reportedly be announced on Thursday afternoon during an event at Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas.
Previous reports by the Associated Press and other news sources claimed Donald Trump would endorse Newt Gingrich. Now, however, the AP and other media outlets have changed their tune due to information allegedly leaked by three unnamed GOP officials. Trump has also reportedly stated he will have a ‘big announcement’ soon. A public schedule released by Romney’s campaign on Thursday, shows a 12:30 event scheduled in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“I have no idea what the Donald is going to do,†Gingrich told reporters yesterday in Reno. “He is always interesting, and I don’t know of anybody who does a better job of getting attention by announcing that he will presently announce something.â€
If Donald Trump endorses former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, it may not make much of a difference in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination. According to a Pew survey poll last month, sixty-four percent of possible GOP voters stated that such an endorsement would mean nothing to them. Only thirteen percent stated that a Donald Trump endorsement might make them more likely to vote for a candidate. Conversely, 20 percent actually said it would make them LESS likely to vote for a candidate. (Ouch!)
While Celebrity Apprentice host Donald Trump prepares to finally officially endorse a candidate, Mitt Romney is fighting once again to quash a negative backlash for something that fell out of his mouth. On Wednesday, Mitt Romney outraged lower income Americans when he implied that he didn’t really give a damn about really poor people.
In an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, Mitt Romney said he was not “concerned about the very poor.” Stumping for his campaign, Romney said “we have a safety net” for the poorest Americans. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90%, 95% of Americans right now who are struggling, and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”
When questioned further by O’Brien, Romney stated that the very poor have access to Medicaid, housing vouchers, food stamps and other services. “You can choose where to focus,” he said. “You can focus on the rich; that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor; that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.”
When outrage erupted over what some considered to be callous and cold commentary about the plight of the poorest of Americans, Romney attempted to backpedal and claimed his words were taken out of context.
“You’ve got to take the whole sentence, (or else) it sounds very different,” he said. “We have a safety net for the poor. … If there are people that are falling through the cracks, I want to fix that.”
Even though Romney may still be suffering from a case of foot in mouth disease, national polls still show him as the now clear Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination at present following his victory in the Florida primary.
Ha ha! They’re both rich and they both like to fire people.