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For the Record: The 50-state reality show

Brett McGinness ,  Joanna Allhands ,  Jessica Estepa   | Paste BN

Happy Thursday, everyone! Did you happen to catch Adele’s concert at Radio City Music Hall this week? Donald Trump did! Word is that he even tried to call his new pal Bobby Jindal from the show to say hello, and ask him if he ever made it out of that happy hour debate where nothing ever happened.

In today’s For the Record, we have more on Trump (and how to avoid him), Marco Rubio’s imminent ad blitz, and the Ben Carson campaign’s struggles with two parts of the world: the American part and the “everywhere else” part.

Where in the World is the For the Record Team? You can follow us on Twitter (@jmestepa, @joannaallhands, @RGJBrettMcG) while you encourage your friends to sign up for For the Record in your inbox six days a week.

CAN’T WAIT FOR THE EPISODE WHERE THEY FIRE CONNECTICUT, BUT BRING BACK OMAROSA

Despite months of predicting his eventual downfall, we keep inching closer and closer to a day when Trump divides all the states into Versacorp States and Protégé States, and then fires Nebraska for not selling enough lemonade. Trump has a YUUUGE lead in the latest New Hampshire poll, more than doubling the support of his closest rivals, Rubio and Ted Cruz. He’s also topping both Floridians (Rubio and Jeb Bush) and a possible general election foe (Hillary Clinton) in the latest poll from swing-state Florida. You can create your own personal Trump-free bubble around your iPhone with a new app, but let’s face it, it’s not going to save you when you get summoned to the boardroom.

RUBIO LURES MORE DONORS OFF THE SIDELINES

Several big-money GOP donors are hanging on to their stacks and stacks of cash for now, mainly because Jeb Bush has parlayed all his donations into the fifth-place slot mere weeks before voting begins, and no clear alternative to Trump has emerged. Lately, though, it’s looking like Rubio may be the consensus pick. (Cue the $.) Rubio’s numbers aren’t great in Iowa, so he’s going to focus his advertising firepower on poor, unsuspecting New Hampshirites who will soon long for a 1-877-Kars-4-Kids commercial to break up the nonstop Rubio blitz.

BUSH BETTER HAVE MY MONEY

Speaking of Jeb – you know, the guy who had all the millions of dollars in Establishment money early on – he’d like to let you know that he’s a political outsider. "Thirty-two years in the private sector — eight years as governor," Bush told Paste BN. "Never worked in Washington, D.C. — never lived in Washington, D.C." So in other words, if your childhood home had two or fewer future presidents in it, you can still call yourself a political outsider.

HE JUST WANTS TO LEAD THE FREE WORLD, NOT PLAN A ROAD TRIP AROUND IT

With foreign policy advisers like this, who needs enemies? Ben Carson foreign policy adviser Duane Clarridge, ostensibly trying to get Carson elected president, told The New York Times that nobody has been able to “have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East.” Yikes. In response, Carson’s campaign insisted that Clarridge wasn’t really an adviser, and also that the NYT was taking advantage of an “elderly gentleman” who is “coming to the end of a long career of serving our country” (translation: crazy old man doesn’t know anything). Meanwhile, Carson’s social media/geoengineering team tweeted out a map that moved most of New England up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, shutting down shipping to the Great Lakes altogether. Looks like we know what puzzle he was working on during the first GOP debate!

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