Maggie Haberman and Ben Smith wrap up a "what's really up with Trump?" thumbsucker with the following testimony:“I don’t see Donald Trump trudging around in the snows of Iowa wearing ear flaps and trudging around the country fair,” said a top official at the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land. “But look, we live in the celebrity age. He is a celebrity. He's got the name recognition. He’s got the money. He certainly appears to have the moxie. So maybe Americans are ready for a brash New Yorker.”
I'd speculated that Trump's longtime friend and adviser, former Nixon-Reagan operative Roger Stone, was the one who'd nudged him into the swamp of birtherism, where many a 2012 GOP prospect risks getting irretrievably mired. But Haberman and Smith report that Stone denies any direct involvement with Trump's current political activities. That could be because it's true. It also could be because the always controversial Stone doesn't want to end up as a stumbling block for the sufficiently controversial Trump.
