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Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Thursday, July 02, 2015

With Another Corporate Partner Fleeing, Has Donald Trump Hit His High-Water Mark?

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.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

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