Wall Street Journal
By Reid J. Epstein
July 1, 2015
Riding
high in the polls and with his name in the headlines for yet another
rift with a corporate partner, Donald Trump has probably hit the
high-water mark for his presidential
campaign.
After
more than 700,000 people signed a Moveon.org petition calling on Macy’s
M +0.19% to end its relationship with Mr. Trump, it was only a matter
of time before the
retailer did so.
Mr.
Trump’s disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants – he called them
“rapists” in his campaign announcement speech last month – threaten to
make him toxicin a corporate
America that generally abhors political controversy. The question
outstanding is whether other companies doing business with the Trump
brand follow NBC, Univision and Macy’s to divorce themselves from him.
If
more follow suit, in each instance it will yield another round of news
stories for the New York real estate titan and reality television star –
the sort of free publicity
that most of the other 13 announced Republican presidential candidates
can’t buy.
Mr.
Trump, with decades of experience of getting his name in the New York
tabloids, knows this game well and seems keen to play the severing of
his business relationships
into the sort of political victimhood that runs deep in some corners of
the Republican primary electorate.
“Clearly,
NBC and Macy’s support illegal immigration, which is totally
detrimental to the fabric of our once great country,” Mr. Trump said in a
Wednesday statement. “Both
Macy’s and NBC totally caved at the first sight of potential difficulty
with special interest groups who are nothing more than professional
agitators, who are not looking out for the people they purport to
represent, but only for themselves.”
And
as long as Mr. Trump is in the news as the sort of unvarnished tribune
of the nativist right, he will attract sufficient support in national
polls to qualify for the
Republican National Committee-sanctioned debates, which begin in
August.
Mr.
Trump placed second in a CNN poll released Wednesday, with 12% support
among GOP primary voters. Only Jeb Bush did better, with 19%. A
Quinnipiac survey of Iowa Republicans
placed Mr. Trump in a second place tie with retired neurosurgeon Ben
Carson at 10%. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who will enter the race
later this month, was first at 18%.
These
numbers follow the 11% Mr. Trump received in a poll of New Hampshire
Republicans released last week, in a survey that placed him second
behind Mr. Bush.
But
10%-11% is probably Mr. Trump’s ceiling. His favorability rating is
underwater among Iowa Republicans – 47% disapprove of him, compared to
42% who approve.
Last
week’s poll of New Hampshire Republicans found they too disapprove of
him – 49% to 37%. And the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released
last week found two-thirds
of Republicans national said they could not ever see themselves
supporting Mr. Trump.
CNN
didn’t ask its national audience about Mr. Trump’s favorability, but he
did fare the worst of five GOP candidates it tested against likely
Democratic nominee Hillary
Clinton. In a two-way matchup with the former secretary of state, CNN’s
audience gave Mr. Trump just 34% of the vote.
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