Ballot Box: Democrat Bernie Sanders trounced Hillary Clinton yesterday in Washington State, Alaska, and Hawaii, leaving him still far behind in the delegate count but gathering momentum. Sanders won Washington with 72 percent of the vote, Alaska with 81, and Hawaii with 70.6.

Alaska and Washington are largely white states, lacking the black and Latino voters who have stood with Clinton. But the wins will help feed Sanders’ campaign funds and help him buy expensive television ads for coming primaries.

The Donald: In 100 minutes of telephone interviews with the NY Times, Donald Trump said that if he’s president the Arab states will have to send ground troops to fight the Islamic State or “substantially reimburse’ the US for doing the job for them.

Trump described himself as “not isolationist, but I am America First.”

He also said that Japan and South Korea need to pay more to house US troops in their countries, and he would not be opposed to having both develop nuclear weapons to provide their own deterrence.

The Times reports that in his interviews, Trump approached most world problems as a matter of business and negotiation. He said the way to stop Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea is to block their access to US markets — although he didn’t say anything about the trade war that would likely result.

Vax Populi: Actor Robert DeNiro has pulled a questionable anti-vaccination documentary from his Tribeca Film Festival, but only after giving the film credence by offering to screen it.

The film, “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” is directed and co-written by Andrew Wakefield, who lost his British medical license for falsifying researching linking the Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine to autism. DeNiro initially defended the scheduling of the film with a statement saying, “Grace and I have a child with autism and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined.”

But discussing a link between the MMR shot and autism has been compared to a “discussion” about the validity of evolution. The incisive LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik writes that, “Wakefield’s claims have been conclusively discredited everywhere but in the fever swamp of the anti-vaccine movement — and now in the glamorous environment of the Tribeca Film Festival.”

Permawar: The Syrian army says it has re-taken the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State. ISIS blew up some of Palmyra’s most important ruins during the occupation. The 2,000 year-old ruins used to draw tens o thousands of tourists a year — The young American couple Justin and Stephanie Shults have been confirmed to have been killed in the Brussels airport bombing. They were married in 2011 and were working in Europe.

Bullet Point: Nearly 30,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that attendees of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer be allowed to carry guns — for safety. The petition claims that the gun ban by Quicken Loans Arena makes people who go to the convention “sitting ducks, utterly helpless against evil-doers and criminals.” No to mention that their entire political party might get hijacked.

The American Candidate: Defending his wife against insults by Donald Trump, presidential candidate Ted Cruz had the script in hand.

-“If Donald wants to get into a character fight he’s better off sticking with me because Heidi is way out of his league.” –Ted Cruz

– “You want a character debate Bob, you better stick with me because Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.” – Michael Douglas in The American President.

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