All of the bigotry and nonsense Trump has said and done
Last updated 4/22/16
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Indefensible racist remarks he has made in the past that he continues to pretend did not happen
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Donald Trump’s vehement questioning regarding President Obama’s place of birth has provoked charges of racism, with a number of public figures from Whoopi Goldberg to Jesse Jackson accusing the real estate magnate of employing crude and unfair stereotypes. The chorus has grown so intense that Trump this week felt compelled to declare otherwise, telling TMZ.com: “I am the last person that such a thing should be said about.”
But for Trump, allegations of racism amount to recurring themes in his larger-than-life career. Two weeks ago, when he was asked during a radio interview about whether or not he is supported by African-Americans, he sparked another firestorm when he blurted: “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.” Trump’s comments were “highly offensive,” Walter Fields, former head of NAACP New Jersey, told Capital New York.
But Trump has been called out several times for racial insensitivity by former co-workers and civil rights activists. In 1991, Trump was accused of making racial slurs against black people in a book written by John R. O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, called “Trumped!” O’Donnell wrote that Trump once said, in reference to a black accountant at Trump Plaza, “laziness is a trait in blacks.” He also told O’Donnell: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
Trump called O’Donnell a disgruntled employee but he didn’t deny allegations made in the book during an interview with Playboy magazine in 1999:
“Nobody has had worse things written about them than me,” Trump says. “And here I am. The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true. The guy’s a fucking loser. A fucking loser. I brought the guy in to work for me; it turns out he didn’t know that much about what he was doing. I think I met the guy two or three times total. And this guy goes off and writes a book about me, like he knows me!”
After the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989, Trump aroused controversy in New York’s black community when he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the African-American teenage suspects — who were all later exonerated. One of the defendant’s lawyers, Colin Moore, compared Trump’s stance to the racist attitudes expressed in the 1930s during the infamous “Scottsboro Boys” case. Trump tried to mend relations by visiting a black woman who had been raped and thrown off the roof of a building in the hospital, promising to pay her medical expenses, according to several news reports.
Later that year, Trump caught flack for his comments attacking affirmative action on NBC’s two-hour special “The Race,” telling host Bryant Gumbel: “If I was starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black because I really do believe they have the actual advantage today.” That remark was derided by Orlando Sentinel columnist David D. Porter, who opined: “Too bad Trump can’t get his wish. Then he’d see that being educated, black and over 21 isn’t the key to the Trump Tower. You see there’s still that little ugly problem of racism.”
Yet the most damaging episode in the saga of Trump’s fractured relationship with the black community came in 1973, when his family’s real-estate company, Trump Management Corporation, was sued by the Justice Department for alleged racial discrimination. At the time, Trump was the company’s president. Just last month, at Trump’s Comedy Central roast, Snoop Dogg referenced the case by joking about Trump’s potential 2012 run for the White House: “Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time he pushed a black family out of their home.”
The case alleged that the Trump Management Corporation had discriminated against blacks who wished to rent apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The government charged the corporation with quoting different rental terms and conditions to blacks and whites and lying to blacks that apartments were not available, according to reports of the lawsuit.
-April 29, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/29/donald-trump-blacks-lawsuit_n_855553.html
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Repeats Birther lie that Obama did not release a statement for Christmas in 2011 (he released several), makes racist remark in same breath for taking issue with statement about Kwanzaa
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“What a convenient mistake: @BarackObama issued a statement for Kwanza but failed to issue one for Christmas.”
-December 28, 2011
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/152056935712169984
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Sexist remark against Arianna Huffington
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“@ariannahuff is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man- he made a good decision.”
-August 28, 2012
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/240462265680289792
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Claims sexual assault is inevitable, ignores why there have only been 238 convictions in an organization that likes controversies to go away quietly to not tarnish its image
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“26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”
-May 7, 2013
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/331907383771148288
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Insecure about his intelligence, insults the intelligence of those who disagree with him
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“Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure,it's not your fault”
-May 8, 2013
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/332308211321425920?lang=en
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Repeats Bill O’Reilly’s racist remarks that minorities are violent criminals
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This morning, Trump added to his portfolio of race-based insults, citing figures provided by Fox News Channel anchor Bill O’Reilly as proof that “the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics.”
“We must stop being so politicially correct,” he tweeted. “Must tell it like it is.”
His first tweet on the subject said this: "According to Bill O'Reilly, 80% of all the shootings in New York City are blacks-if you add Hispanics, that figure goes to 98%. 1% white.”
-June 5, 2013
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Reminds everyone the real reason why he doesn’t like Obama is because he is black
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“Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won't see another black president for generations!”
-November 25, 2014
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/537157586316165120
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Makes racist remark against Obama, uses racist dog whistle word to refer to protestors in Baltimore
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“Our great African American President hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!”
-April 27, 2015
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/592910662424223744
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Believes wealth is a qualification for running for president—by that logic, Bernie Madoff should be running
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In his own words, Donald Trump is “really rich.”
The now-Republican presidential candidate demonstrated this when he released a financial snapshot of his net worth on Tuesday, declaring a net worth of nearly $9 billion.
He released the financial summary as he declared his White House candidacy at a rally in New York.
The summary pegs his total assets at $9.24 billion, and his net worth at $8.74 billion.
Unlike other presidential candidates pitching a populist message and trying to make themselves relatable to middle-class voters, Trump boasted of his net worth during his announcement.
“I’m really rich,” he said, in his trademark brash style.
-June 16, 2015
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/16/im-really-rich-trump-declares-b-net-worth.html
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Racist comments about Mexicans
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“When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best,” he said during the announcement. “They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting."
– June 16, 2015
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Makes racist remark about Obama again, makes racist remark about African Americans over all, again
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On the same day that a New Hampshire poll put Donald Trump second in the race to be the Republican Party's nominee for president in 2016, the New York mogul said that African-American youths had "no spirit" and blamed Barack Obama for dividing the country.
Mr Trump was talking at the annual dinner of the Maryland GOP on 23 June, which state officials said would draw in over $100,000 for the party in the Northeastern state.
Talking with reporters, he spoke briefly about race relations in the country following the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina last week and after President Obama discussed the matter with Marc Maron, with the country's first black president using the "N-word".
Mr Trump said that African-American youth had reached "a point where they've just about never done more poorly, there's no spirit, there’s killings on an hourly basis virtually in places like Baltimore and Chicago and many other places.
"There’s no spirit. I thought that President Obama would be a great cheerleader for the country. And he’s really become very divisive."
-June 24, 2015
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Thinks building a very expensive wall will solve illegal border crossing issues, apparently is unaware most unauthorized overstays arrived in the US legally, usually by airplane
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Donald Trump said he would force the people of Mexico to build his vowed border wall to keep immigrants out of the United States, warning that if his order was not fulfilled, he would do something “severe.”
When asked how he might force the country to build this wall, Trump said in an interview that aired on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, “you force them because we give them a fortune. Mexico makes a fortune because of us. A wall is a tiny little peanut compared to that. I would do something very severe unless they contributed or gave us the money to build the wall.”
The 2016 presidential candidate added: “I’d build it. I’d build it very nicely. I’m very good at building things.”
-June 28, 2015
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trump-i-would-force-mexico-build-border-wall
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Refuses to back down on racist remarks against Mexicans, double-downs on calling Mexican immigrants rapists, ignores 52% of sexual assault offenders are white
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"Well if you look at the statistics of people coming, you look at the statistics on rape, on crime, on everything coming in illegally into this country it's mind-boggling!" he told Lemon, in a clip previewed on CNN's "Situation Room."
"If you go to Fusion, you will see a story: About 80% of the women coming in, you know who owns Fusion? Univision! Go to Fusion and pick up the stories on rape. It's unbelievable when you look at what's going on. So all I'm doing is telling the truth," Trump said.
Lemon replied that the press stories are about women being raped, but not about criminals coming across the border.
"Well, somebody's doing the raping, Don! I mean somebody's doing it! Who's doing the raping? Who's doing the raping?" he asked.
July 2, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/01/politics/donald-trump-immigrants-raping-comments/
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“Accidentally” uses image of Nazi soldiers (not Wehrmacht—the reenactors are wearing actual Waffen-SS uniforms) inlaid on one of his first campaign images—only problem is the image was from iStock, where other similar images showed the Germany Military Iron Cross, reenactor wearing German WW2 uniform and holding an MP40, and the keywords under the photo include “German Culture” and Fascism,” making this very deliberate
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On Tuesday, Donald Trump (or, should we say, Donald Trump's Twitter account), tweeted one more plug for the GOP presidential candidate's campaign.
#MakeAmericaGreatAgain, the hashtag read. Then came an image of the American flag, the stars resplendently laid over a portrait of Trump gazing sternly at something, the stripes over motifs of American triumphalism: cash money, the White House, and soldiers.
An all-caps caption declared: "We need real leadership. We need results. Let's put the U.S. back into business!"
Except, there was a problem. As Twitter users quickly pointed out, the soldiers in the bottom-right of the image were not American. They weren't even from an Allied military. They were German World War II soldiers.
Trump's original tweet was swiftly deleted and the Trump campaign eventually pinned the error on an intern.
-July 14, 2015
https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/621043655151853568/photo/1
http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/marching-soldiers-gm90710202-1899529
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Insulting POWs
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Appearing on Saturday at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, the real estate mogul took his running feud with Arizona Sen. John McCain to a new level. “He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
– July 18, 2015
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317
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Tries to pander to African Americans, makes up fictitious statement that he has good relationship with black community despite having received nothing but criticism for the last 25+ years
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“And, you know, I have a great relationship with African Americans, as you possibly have heard. I just have great respect for them and you know they like me. I like them.”
-July 23, 2015
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Probably raped his ex-wife; his attorney proclaims it’s impossible to rape your spouse
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump may have raped his ex-wife Ivana Trump, according to a 1993 biography of the real estate mogul uncovered by The Daily Beast. Trump’s attorney on Monday denied the allegation, claiming “you cannot rape your spouse.”
“You’re talking about the front-runner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as private individual, who never raped anybody,” Michael Cohen, the Trump Organization’s special counsel, told The Daily Beast. “And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.”
The biography, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, by Harry Hurt III, details a 1989 incident in which Trump reportedly confronted his then-wife Ivana, pulling out clumps of her hair and sexually assaulting her. She characterized the incident as rape during the couple’s divorce proceedings in the early 1990s and said she felt “violated,” according to legal documents cited by The Daily Beast.
Hurt’s book includes a “Notice to Reader” pasted on the flyleaf — a statement by Ivana Trump saying she didn’t mean it when she testified Trump had raped her. “I do not want the press or media to misconstrue any of the facts,” she wrote. The couple divorced in 1992.
-July 27, 2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-rape_us_55b6df6ce4b0074ba5a60418
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So uncomfortable with the way a woman’s body works he couldn’t handle a woman requesting a break from a deposition to pump breast milk
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Donald Trump had an "absolute meltdown" when a lawyer requested a break from a 2011 deposition to pump breast milk.
"He got up, his face got red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, 'You're disgusting, you're disgusting,' and he ran out of there," attorney Elizabeth Beck told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on Wednesday morning.
The incident was described in a letter from Jared Beck, Elizabeth's co-counsel and husband, obtained by CNN and first reported Tuesday by the New York Times.
Trump's attorney Allen Garten, who was present for the deposition, does not dispute that Trump called Beck "disgusting."
-July 29, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/29/politics/trump-breast-pump-statement/
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Sexist remarks on Megyn Kelly
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Friday night that Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly "had blood coming out of her eyes" when she aggressively questioned him during Thursday's presidential debate. "She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions," Trump said in a CNN interview. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off base."
– August 7, 2015
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Sexist remarks in general of women who criticize him
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Trump largely dismissed Kelly’s question at the debate, but on Friday he went directly after her. Before dawn, he had retweeted a post calling Kelly a “bimbo.” The post was later deleted, but on Friday evening Trump called Kelly a “lightweight.”
Trump has a long history of lobbing insults at those he feels have treated him unfairly, and advises those who buy his books to do the same.
“For many years I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back,” he wrote in “Trump: How to Get Rich.” ”When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can.”
When doing so, he has repeatedly targeted women and their physical appearance.
“Rosie O’Donnell’s disgusting, I mean both inside and out. You take a look at her, she’s a slob. She talks like a truck driver,” he said in 2006 during an interview with “Entertainment Tonight.” ”I’d look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say, ‘Rosie, you’re fired'” from her television show, “The View.”
In tweets sent last year, Trump called Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington “a dog who wrongfully comments on me” and said she is “ugly both inside and out!”
In 2012, Trump wrote on Twitter of singer Bette Midler: “But whenever she sees me, she kisses my ass. She’s disgusting.”
During the debate, Kelly also referenced a boardroom scene from Trump’s NBC’s realty show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” in which Trump was told by one contestant that a female teammate had gotten down on her knees to beg.
“That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees,” Trump said in response.
In the book, Trump declared that, “All the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”
And he had this to say about women’s victories on the show: “It’s certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on ‘The Apprentice’ were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal.”
On some occasions Trump appears to have recognized he’s gone too far. In April, he retweeted, then deleted, a tweet that read, “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?”
-August 7, 2015
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trump-i-dont-recognize-insults-of-women/
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His immigration reforms make the anti-immigration policies of the 1920s look timid in comparison and would cost over $1.6 trillion dollars
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The flashiest part of Donald Trump's immigration plan might be the proposed erection of a wall along the US-Mexico border.
But it would likely be far from the most expensive part of a plan that could run a tab in the hundreds of billions.
Though his platform doesn't explicitly lay out what he'd propose to do with immigrants not authorized to live in the United States, Trump suggested in an interview with "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd that he would move to deport all of the approximately 11 million immigrants living in the country without proper authorization.
"We will work with them," he said when asked by Todd if he was going to "break up families."
"They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country or we don't have a country."
But that wouldn't come cheap. National Journal's Lauren Fox laid out the math on Trump's plan Tuesday.
One report, released in 2010 by the left-leaning Center for American Progress, estimated that it would cost $200 billion to "to enforce a federal dragnet that would snare" immigrants unauthorized to live in the United States.
However, that calculation used figures from 2008, which estimated the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States at 10.8 million. A more recent estimate, from the non-partisan Pew Research Center, pegs the number at 11.3 million, about half of whom came from Mexico.
Another recent estimate calculated that the cost of deportation would be disastrous for the US economy. According to the right-leaning American Action Forum, it would take between $400 billion and $600 billion to deport 11 million people without proper documentation over 20 years.
That estimate doesn't take into account the cost of enforcement to prevent return, which could reach upward of $300 billion. Such mass deportation would take 6.4% of US workers out of the country, according to the AAF report. With them would depart approximately $1.6 trillion in wages, spending, and other economic activity, more than the GDP of Texas. The agricultural industry would be disproportionately affected by the move — half of the US' farm workers in the past 15 years have been undocumented.
-August 18, 2015
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-does-donald-trumps-immigration-plan-cost-2015-8
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All the glaring sexist remarks Trump has made over the years, including insisting all women are gold diggers, that they have to be pretty to work as journalists, objectifying women, and has made countless misogynist remarks as if he is a man from the 1910s who scoffs at the idea that women should be allowed to vote
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“I would never buy Ivana any decent jewels or pictures. Why give her negotiable assets?” Trump is quoted as saying of his then-wife in a 1990 Vanity Fair piece.
In his 2006 book Trump 101: The Way to Success, Trump wrote: “Beauty and elegance, whether in a woman, a building, or a work of art, is not just superficial or something pretty to see.”
“It’s certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on ‘The Apprentice’ were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal.” — How To Get Rich, 2004
“You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.” — from an interview with Esquire, 1991
“I mean, we could say politically correct that look doesn’t matter, but the look obviously matters,” Trump said to a female reporter in a clip featured on “Last Week Tonight.” “Like you wouldn’t have your job if you weren’t beautiful.”
“The most difficult aspect of the prenuptial agreement is informing your future wife (or husband): I love you very much, but just in case things don’t work out, this is what you will get in the divorce. There are basically three types of women and reactions. One is the good woman who very much loves her future husband, solely for himself, but refuses to sign the agreement on principle. I fully understand this, but the man should take a pass anyway and find someone else. The other is the calculating woman who refuses to sign the prenuptial agreement because she is expecting to take advantage of the poor, unsuspecting sucker she’s got in her grasp. There is also the woman who will openly and quickly sign a prenuptial agreement in order to make a quick hit and take the money given to her.” —Trump: The Art of the Comeback, 1997
“Women have one of the great acts of all time. The smart ones act very feminine and needy, but inside they are real killers. The person who came up with the expression ‘the weaker sex’ was either very naive or had to be kidding. I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye — or perhaps another body part.” — Trump: The Art of the Comeback, 1997
“My favorite part [of ‘Pulp Fiction’] is when Sam has his gun out in the diner and he tells the guy to tell his girlfriend to shut up. Tell that bitch to be cool. Say: ‘Bitch be cool.’ I love those lines.” — TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald, 2005
New York Times columnist Gail Collins recalled: “During one down period, I referred to him in print as a ‘financially embattled thousandaire’ and he sent me a copy of the column with my picture circled and ‘The Face of a Dog!’ written over it.”
“Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred,” Trump said about himself one time. “Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.”
-August 19, 2015
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Wants to end clause in 14th Amendment that grants citizenship to anybody born in the US
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants has refueled the immigration debate and spilt the GOP field and legal experts who question whether such a change is possible.
Trump’s plan goes after the 14th amendment, which grants citizenship to essentially anybody born in the United States. But he is particularly focused on stopping pregnant women from illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for the purpose of having a child or an “anchor baby,” which reduces the likelihood of the parents being deported.
Trump announced his plan Sunday, calling the amendment the country’s “biggest magnet for illegal immigration.” And he continues to suggest that his lawyers think the amendment might not withstand a court challenge.
“I was right,” Trump, the billionaire businessman and top GOP candidate, said Friday night at a rally in Alabama. “You can do something, quickly.”
However, other candidates and legal experts are split on the issue.
“Trump thinks ‘our country is going to hell.’ Well, there is likely little more than a chance in hell that we are going to amend the Constitution,” Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola University of Los Angeles, said Wednesday. “Amending the Constitution is one of the most serious things that lawmakers can do. Therefore the path to doing it is rightfully arduous. I would put the chances … as beyond a longshot."
-August 22, 2015
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Claims the Bible is his favorite book, can’t quote a single verse, gets called out for his previous cynical remarks on religion and dodges
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Donald Trump regularly tells crowds that his memoir is only his second favorite book.
His first? The Bible.
"As much as I love 'The Art of the Deal,' it's not even close," he said Friday. "We take the Bible all the way."
But when asked Wednesday on Bloomberg's "With All Due Respect" to share his favorite verses, Trump, a Presbyterian, was not as direct.
"I wouldn't want to get into it. Because to me, that's very personal," he said. "The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics."
Trump, who once referred to communion as "my little wine and my little cracker," was asked if he prefers the New or Old Testaments.
"Probably equal. I think it's just incredible," he said.
-August 27, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/27/politics/donald-trump-favorite-bible-verses/
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Sexist remarks on Carly Fiorina
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When the anchor throws to Carly Fiorina for her reaction to Trump's momentum, Trump's expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina. 'Look at that face!' he cries. 'Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!'
– September 10, 2015
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/09/10/trump-fiorina-look-face/71992454/
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Has repeatedly made comments about his daughter that suggest an interest in incest dating back to 2003, when she was 22 and he was 57, also suggesting pedophiliac tendencies
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With all the hullabaloo surrounding Donald Trump’s attack on Carly Fiorina in the newest edition of Rolling Stone, it’s gone largely unnoticed that in the very next paragraph, Trump makes an über-creepy sex joke about his daughter Ivanka Trump.
“At 69, he can still carry on like the teen who was yanked out of prep school and delivered to Col. Dobias, the take-no-shit instructor at the military academy. After I met Ivanka and praised her to her father, he said, ‘Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father . . . ’”
But as Rolling Stone’s Paul Solotaroff points out, this isn’t even the first time Donald Trump has made that joke…In 2006…Trump was asked how he would feel if Ivanka posed for Playboy. “It would be really disappointing — not really — but it would depend on what’s inside the magazine. I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
Earlier in 2003 on The Howard Stern Show, Donald Trump was also bragging about his daughter’s hot body: “You know who’s one of the great beauties of the world, according to everybody? And I helped create her. Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She’s 6 feet tall, she’s got the best body. She made a lot money as a model—a tremendous amount.”
-September 10, 2015
http://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-trump-wont-stop-joking-about-banging-his-daughter/
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Scammed people out of an education by calling a confidence scheme disguised as a self-help seminar as “Trump University”
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They hoped to get rich off real estate, and who would be a better mentor than one of the richest men in the world? So they enrolled in Donald Trump’s university to learn the tricks of the trade, some of them maxing out their credit cards to pay tens of thousands of dollars for insider knowledge they believed could make them wealthy.
With Trump rising in the polls as the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, his brief foray into education is an episode — and a business failure — that remains far more obscure than other chapters of the celebrity billionaire’s career.
Never licensed as a school, Trump University was in reality a series of real estate workshops in hotel ballrooms around the country, not unlike many other for-profit self-help or motivational seminars. Though short-lived, it remains a thorn in Trump’s side nearly five years after its operations ceased: In three pending lawsuits, including one in which the New York attorney general is seeking $40 million in restitution, former students allege that the enterprise bilked them out of their money with misleading advertisements.
Instead of a fast route to easy money, these Trump University students say they found generic seminars led by salesmen who pressured them to invest more cash in additional courses. The students say they didn’t learn Trump’s secrets and never received the one-on-one guidance they expected.
It’s a chapter of Trump’s past that shows how he sometimes defies the usual laws of campaign physics. Such allegations of multimillion-dollar fraud might sink other candidates, but in Trump’s case, even some of the students who felt duped said they haven’t given up on him: They like Trump. They admire him. They might even vote for him.
“He says what he means, not like politicians, not like Obama,” said Louie Liu of Hurst, Tex. Liu, a motel owner, said in a sworn affidavit that he paid $1,495 for a three-day seminar, then felt lured into paying $24,995 for more classes, an online training program and a three-day in-person mentorship. A few days later, he called to ask for a refund, but his request was rejected. Trump University, he concluded, was a “scam.”
-September 13, 2015
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432010/trump-university-scam
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Believes vaccines cause autism, insults people with autism by referring it to as an epidemic
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Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Wednesday doubled down on his controversial stance that vaccinations are linked to what he described as an autism “epidemic.”
“I’ve seen it,” he said at the second main-stage GOP debate on CNN Wednesday night.
“You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump — it looks just like it’s meant for a horse," he said of vaccines.
"We’ve had so many instances ... a child went to have the vaccine, got very, very sick, and now is autistic."
The GOP front-runner said he still supported certain vaccines, but in smaller doses over a longer period of time. Under current procedures, he said it's dangerous for the public.
“Autism has become an epidemic, he said. “It has gotten totally out of control.”
-September 16, 2015
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-really-an-autism-epidemic/
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Tries to dodge that he is an Obama birther, reaffirms his racist belief that Obama is a Muslim by not correcting supporter who called the president as much
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Real-estate tycoon Donald Trump refused to answer multiple questions about President Barack Obama's birth certificate on Sunday.
"I just don't want to discuss it," the Republican presidential front-runner said on "Meet the Press."
He listed some topics he would prefer talking about and called the birth-certificate question "a long, complex subject that I just don't like talking about, and I won't talk about it."
Host Chuck Todd pressed Trump a second time on the issue, but the businessman dodged again, insisting he wanted to talk about things like the economy.
"I just don't discuss it," Trump said. "And really it hasn't been brought up for a long time."
The exchange follows Trump's latest campaign-trail controversy: At a Thursday town-hall event, he sparked criticism from his rivals, the White House, and parts of the media by declining to correct a supporter who called Obama a Muslim foreigner.
His campaign initially said he didn't fully hear the supporter, but Trump argued Saturday that he shouldn't be "morally obligated" to defend Obama.
He repeated that argument during his "Meet the Press" interview.
"So this man got up, and he felt very strongly — whoever he was — he felt very, very strongly and very powerfully about something," Trump recalled. "And whether we all agree with it or not, it wasn't my obligation to defend [Obama]."
-September 20, 2015
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-obama-birth-certificate-meet-the-press
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/232572505238433794
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Denies global warming, makes xenophobic remark by claiming it is fabricated by the Chinese
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has rendered his opinion on climate change, and it is characteristically off-kilter.
“Unless somebody can prove something to me, I believe there’s weather. I believe there’s change,” Trump told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Monday.
In a confusing exchange with Hewitt, Trump rattled off several non sequiturs on global temperatures. Trump says that “people in the 1920s thought the Earth was cooling, now it’s global warming,” implying that all subsequent climate science is nonsense.
As David Roberts at Vox points out, scientists never actually believed that the Earth was cooling. Trump appears to be repeating talking points from climate change deniers, who often rely on a 1970s article in Newsweek for their research on “global cooling.” The author of that article has made it clear that the Earth is, in fact, warming and that climate deniers should stop using his article as evidence that it’s not.
In the Hewitt interview, Trump goes on to complain about the government attempting to solve a problem that he doesn’t think “in any major fashion exists.” And he keeps talking:
“And actually, we’ve had times where the weather wasn’t working out, so they changed it to extreme weather, and they have all different names, you know, so that it fits the bill. But the problem we have, and if you look at our energy costs, and all of the things that we’re doing to solve a problem that I don’t think in any major fashion exists. I mean, Obama thinks it’s the number one problem of the world today. And I think it’s very low on the list. So I am not a believer, and I will, unless somebody can prove something to me, I believe there’s weather. I believe there’s change, and I believe it goes up and it goes down, and it goes up again. And it changes depending on years and centuries, but I am not a believer, and we have much bigger problems.”
This is not the first time Trump has denied climate change; he has also attempted to use cold weather to disprove climate change in the past, and argued that global warming was “created by and for the Chinese”:
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
-September 22, 2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-global-warming_us_5601d04fe4b08820d91aa753
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Child-like insecurity over the size of his hands
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For the last 25 years, Donald Trump has been sending pictures of his hands to Graydon Carter to prove his fingers are properly proportioned, the Vanity Fair editor has revealed.
The bizarre, decades-long feud between the journalist and the billionaire presidential candidate began when Carter wrote an essay for Spy magazine calling Trump a "short-fingered vulgarian," Carter wrote in this month's editor's letter.
"The most recent offering arrived earlier this year, before his decision to go after the Republican presidential nomination," Carter said in the piece titled "Why Donald Trump Will Always Be a 'Short-Fingered Vulgarian.' "
"Like the other packages, this one included a circled hand and the words, also written in gold Sharpie: 'See, not so short!' I sent the picture back by return mail with a note attached, saying, 'Actually, quite short.' "
The editor's piece is the latest in the finger-feud though, and after all these years, Carter writes that Trump's "fingers still look abnormally stubby."
Trump defended his phalanges to Page Six in 2011.
"My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body," he said.
-October 26, 2015
http://www.people.com/article/donald-trump-fingers-small-vanity-fair-hands
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Wants to deport all illegal immigrants, despite the fact that it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars
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US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to deport every illegal immigrant from the United States. The other Republican candidates say it can't be done - one called it a "silly argument".
And the majority of US Republican voters disagree with Mr Trump: according to a 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center, 56% believe undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay if they meet certain criteria.
-November 11, 2015
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34789502
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Is an unabashed warmonger, proclaims he would destroy all refinery manufacturing infrastructure in Syria and Iraq and then take over the oil operations to send back to the US
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“ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because they have certain oil camps, right? They have certain area of oil that they took away—some in Syria, some in Iraq—I would bomb the shit out of them. I would just bomb those suckers and, that’s right, I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left and you know what—you’ll get Exxon to come in there and in two months—you ever seen these guys, how good they are, the great oil companies? They’ll rebuild that sucker brand new and it’ll be beautiful and I’d ring it and I’d take the oil.”
-November 12, 2015
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-bomb-isis-2015-11
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Racist remarks about Ben Carson’s upbringing
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Trump first compared the two conditions on CNN and repeated them to a 1,500-person crowd at Iowa Central Community College: "I said that if you're a child molester, a sick puppy, a child molester, there's no cure for that - there's only one cure and we don't want to talk about that cure, that's the ultimate cure. No there's two, there's death and the other thing. But if you're a child molester, there's no cure, they can't stop you. Pathological, there's no cure."
– November 13, 2015
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Repeats fictitious claim that he saw thousands of Muslims celebrating on 9/11, instead repeats what has been a conspiracy theory since 9/11 that was attributed to Israelis at first and has now changed from Israelis into scary Muslims to fit his rhetoric
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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You raised some eyebrows yesterday with comments you made at your latest rally. I want to show them, relating to 9/11.
VIDEO CLIP OF DONALD TRUMP, IN WHICH HE SAYS: “Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: “You know, the police say that didn’t happen and all those rumors have been on the Internet for some time. So did you misspeak yesterday?”
TRUMP: “It did happen. I saw it.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: “You saw that…”
TRUMP: It was on television. I saw it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: “…with your own eyes?”
TRUMP: “George, it did happen.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: “Police say it didn’t happen.”
TRUMP: “There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down — as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: “As I said, the police have said it didn’t happen.”
-November 22, 2015
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/israel.asp
http://www.snopes.com/2015/11/22/donald-trump-cheering-911/
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Encourages his supporters to be violent with BLM protesters
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Donald Trump suggested Sunday the half-dozen white attendees at his campaign rally on Saturday may have reacted appropriately when they shoved, tackled, punched and kicked a black protester who disrupted his speech.
"Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing," Trump said Sunday morning on Fox News, less than 24 hours after his campaign said it "does not condone" the physical altercation.
Trump was not asked by the Fox News hosts about the comments made by his campaign.
The protester, 31-year-old Black Lives Matter activist Mercutio Southall, said the attendees who attacked him also called him and two fellow protestors "monkeys" and the N-word. He told CNN he was "swarmed" by attendees at the Trump event after he and the others began chanting "Dump the Trump" and "Black Lives Matter" during the Republican front-runner's speech to several thousand supporters.
-November 23, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/22/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-protester-confrontation/
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Posts actual falsified white supremacist propaganda data to his Twitter account regarding African American violence after BLM interrupt his rally
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A day after a black activist was kicked and punched by voters at a Donald Trump rally in Alabama, Trump tweeted an image packed with racially loaded and incorrect murder statistics.
The image shows a masked, dark-skinned man with a handgun and a set of points, ostensibly about deaths in 2015:
"Blacks killed by whites -- 2%"
"Blacks killed by police -- 1%"
"Whites killed by police -- 3%"
"Whites killed by whites -- 16%"
"Whites killed by blacks -- 81%"
"Blacks killed by blacks -- 97%’
The image cites the "Crime Statistics Bureau - San Francisco"
None of the numbers are supported by official sources. The figures on black-on-white homicides and white-on-white homicides are wildly inaccurate. And, as several news organizations quickly noted, the "Crime Statistics Bureau" doesn’t exist. We looked for that agency as well and the closest we found in San Francisco were a number of crime scene clean-up services.
-November 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/668520614697820160
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Calls for database to monitor and register Muslims in the US
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It all started on Thursday, Nov. 19, when a Yahoo News reporter asked Trump about his position on increased surveillance of American Muslims.
"France declared this state of emergency where they closed the borders and they established some degree of warrantless searches. I know how you feel about the borders, but do you think there is some kind of state of emergency here, and do we need warrantless searches of Muslims?" the reporter asked.
"We’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago," Trump said.
The Yahoo reporter then asked Trump, "Do you think we might need to register Muslims in some type of database, or note their religion on their ID?"
Trump responded, "We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully."
Here, Trump didn’t reject the idea of a Muslim registry, but he also didn’t give an affirmative "yes" that he wanted to create such a database.
The next day, an MSNBC reporter asked Trump, "Should there be a database or system that tracks Muslims in this country?"
"There should be a lot of systems," Trump responded. "Beyond databases. I mean, we should have a lot of systems."
Trump then digressed to talk about a wall along the southern border, before the reporter interjected, "But that’s something your White House would like to implement."
"I would certainly implement that. Absolutely," Trump said.
Here, we’re not clear if Trump is talking about implementing a wall or implementing a database.
But a few seconds later, when asked how he would register people into a database, Trump said, "It would just be good management."
Finally, the reporter asked if Muslims would legally have to be part of the database.
"They have to be — they have to be," Trump said. "Let me just tell you: The key is people can come to the country, but they have to come legally."
The same day, an NBC reporter also repeatedly asked Trump what the difference is between a registry for Muslims and the registry for Jews under Nazi Germany, to which Trump only replied, "You tell me."
Later that day, Trump wrote on Twitter, "I didn't suggest a database -- a reporter did. We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America."
While that is accurate, Trump also did not dismiss the idea of a database.
After Trump’s tweet, Fox News asked him about his position on a Muslim registry.
"Let's hear it directly from you," said host Kimberly Guilfoyle. "Would President Donald Trump support a full Muslim database?"
"Basically the suggestion was made and (it’s) certainly something we should start thinking about," Trump said, repeating that the reporter presented the idea. "But what I want is a watch list. I want surveillance programs. Obviously, there are a lot of problems. … But, certainly, I would want to have a database for the refugees, for the Syrian refugees that are coming in because nobody knows where they're coming from."
– November 24, 2015
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Mocks disabled reporter
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Donald Trump denies mocking a New York Times reporter’s disability during a campaign speech Tuesday night, saying he’s never seen the reporter before and has no knowledge of his physical appearance.
The Republican presidential candidate outraged The Times after waving his arms in an awkward manner at a rally in South Carolina while talking about a comment made by reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting joint movement.
– November 27, 2015
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/27/donald-trump-nyt-reporter-serge-kovaleski-should-s/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrR-ptRCkoU&feature=youtu.be&t=46m18s
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Wants to ban all Muslims from entering the US indefinitely
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In a statement released today, Republican candidate Donald Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the United States until "our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."
"Mr. Trump stated, Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life," the statement read.
– December 7, 2015
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Neo-Nazi that runs large Internet forum for Neo-Nazis says he has to expand server space because the popularity of Trump has driven up traffic to his website
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Don Black has come a long way from leading the Ku Klux Klan. As the Grand Wizard, or national leader, of the group in 1978, he's credited with growing the movement.
He says that now that work is largely being done by GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.
Black quit the KKK in 1987, after a stint in prison for trying to invade the island of Dominica. He’s also cut his ties with America’s Nazi party, of which he was a member in the 70s. He no longer calls himself a white supremacist, although his definition of a supremacist is "someone who believes in exploiting and enslaving other people."
Instead, he considers himself white nationalist. He believes that whites are their own nation, and should have their own country. Ideally, that country would span "sea to shining sea," but he recognizes the impossibilities of that idea, and resigns himself to taking whatever land he can get.
Black now runs Stormfront, an internet forum that he says gets one million unique visitors per month. Its community is filled with white nationalists, white supremacists, and Neo-Nazis — not that Black thinks that's a bad thing. Adolf Hitler, he said, is unfairly assessed by historians.
"Hitler, of course, has been demonized because he lost," Black told INSIDER, a Confederate flag hanging behind him. "There are a lot of things he said about Hitler that simply weren't true."
Trump's presidential campaign is helping Stormfront grow. Trump is a daily topic of discussion on the site, and ever since he announced his candidacy in June — infamously categorizing Mexican immigrants as criminals, drug smugglers, and rapists — Black has seen a steady uptick in growth.
"We are getting new servers and expanding, and upgrading software in the next month," Black said. "We're getting there, we're seeing it."
-December 14, 2015
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-helping-white-supremacist-website-2015-12
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Wants to commit war crimes, claims not wanting to commit war crimes is political correctness
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Donald Trump says the United States should kill the family members of terrorists, and not to do so is just being "politically correct."
"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families," Trump said on Fox and Friends on Dec. 2, 2015. "They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."
-December 17, 2015
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Sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton
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Donald Trump attacked Hillary Clinton in vulgar terms Monday night, saying that her bathroom break during the last Democratic debate was just too "disgusting" to talk about and then stating she "got schlonged" by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.
"Even a race to Obama, she was gonna beat Obama. I don't know who would be worse, I don't know, how could it be worse? But she was going to beat -- she was favored to win -- and she got schlonged, she lost, I mean she lost," Trump said, using a vulgar Yiddish word for a man's penis.
Earlier, Trump started to criticize Clinton for not returning to the ABC News debate stage on Saturday night in time, but then said he didn't want to talk more about it because it was "disgusting."
"I know where she went, it's disgusting, I don't want to talk about it," Trump said. "No, it's too disgusting. Don't say it, it's disgusting, let's not talk, we want to be very, very straight up."
– December 22, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-disgusting/
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Sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday accused Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton of “playing the woman’s card” — continuing a war of words between the two campaigns that heated up when Trump said Clinton got "schlonged" in the 2008 Democratic primary.
“She’s playing that woman’s card left and right, and women are more upset about it than anybody else, including most men,” Trump said on Fox News.
– December 27, 2015
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-woman-217146
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Not-so-subtly telling the world that he probably is a white nationalist
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This Friday, Trump’s official Twitter feed retweeted this Tweet that takes a jab at GOP rival Jeb Bush. It shows a photoshopped image of Bush in front of the Trump Towers, holding up a “Vote for Trump” sign.
Seems innocuous enough. Until you see the account it’s retweeted from: @WhiteGenocideTM.
The account promotes a pro-Adolf Hitler documentary “The Greatest Story Never Told.”
But that’s not even the worst of it. A @WhiteGenocideTM photoshop creation shows Trump in a Nazi uniform flipping on the gas switch on a gas chamber housing… Jewish candidate Bernie Sanders.
-January 23, 2016
http://forward.com/opinion/331449/that-time-donald-trump-retweeted-nazis/
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/690562515500032000
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Thinks torture works, wants to bring back waterboarding and worse, wants to violate human rights charter
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Donald Trump said Wednesday that he supports waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques because "torture works" in the questioning of terrorists.
Proponents of waterboarding are careful not to label the technique as torture, which is forbidden by various international laws and treaties. President Obama's administration discontinued the use of waterboarding because it deemed the technique to be torture. During a campaign event at the Sun City retirement community, Trump emphasized his intention to reinstate waterboarding and techniques that are "so much worse" and "much stronger."
"Don't tell me it doesn't work -- torture works," Trump said. "Okay, folks? Torture -- you know, half these guys [say]: 'Torture doesn't work.' Believe me, it works. Okay?"
Trump has long called for the return of waterboarding, and he has seemed to embrace the idea of torture in the past without using the term himself. During a Feb. 7 interview on ABC's "This Week," host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump whether he "would authorize torture." Trump responded: "I would absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding."
Trump said that he would "immediately" resume waterboarding and other techniques that are "much worse" because the United States is facing a barbaric enemy.
-February 17, 2016
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Wants to open up libel laws so he can be more sue-happy than he is now with the people who say mean things about him
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Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to change libel laws in the United States so that he can have an easier time suing news organizations.
During a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, Trump began his usual tirade against newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, saying they're "losing money" and are "dishonest." The Republican presidential candidate then took a different turn, suggesting that when he's president they'll "have problems."
"One of the things I'm going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we're certainly leading. I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected," Trump said.
Under current law, largely determined at the state instead of federal level, public persons, such as politicians, can win a suit against a media organization only if the person can prove that the publication published information with actual malice, knowing it to be wholly incorrect, as well as in cases of reckless disregard. The case that set this precedent — New York Times Co. v. Sullivan — was decided by the Supreme Court in 1964.
"You see, with me, they're not protected, because I'm not like other people but I'm not taking money. I'm not taking their money," Trump said on Friday. "We're going to open up libel laws, and we're going to have people sue you like you've never got sued before."
-February 26, 2016
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump-libel-laws-219866
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White supremacists show up to Nevada caucus rally dressed in KKK robes, wear black gloves to give rise to the idea that they are BLM falsely portraying Trump supporters, Trump never denounces them
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On 23 February 2016, photographs showing two people dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes and holding signs in support of Donald Trump outside Cimarron High School during the Nevada Republican caucus started circulating on the internet.
While the above-displayed photographs are real — several news outlets have confirmed that two people wearing KKK robes were briefly present at a Nevada caucus polling place — the identities of the hooded figures, their political affiliations, and the motivation behind their wardrobe choices are still unknown. On its face, the images show two Ku Klux Klan members showing their support for Donald Trump.
While there are several photos of these alleged Klan members circulating around the internet, they gave no definitive ideas of either the individuals' motivations (were they serious or satirical?) or their backgrounds. Regardless, several people used the photos as proof that not only were these alleged Klansmen black, but that they were members of the Black Lives Matter movement.
However, there was no validity to the theories that the two people dressed in Klan outfits were black or (by extension) members of Black Lives Matter. We spoke to Capt. Ken Young of the Clark County Public Schools Police Department on 25 February 2016. He confirmed to us that the two individuals were white males, and that they left the school as soon as police arrived and told them that they had to go.
-February 24, 2016
http://www.snopes.com/donald-trump-kkk-supporters/
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Retweets famous quote from Italian fascist Benito Mussolini who was allied with Hitler in World War 2, does not denounce it later
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Donald Trump retweeted a quote from Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on Sunday.
The Republican frontrunner shared the saying made famous by the founder of the fascist movement with his 6.4 million followers. “@ilduce2016: ‘It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep,’ – @realDonaldTrump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain,” the tweet said.
Trump said on Sunday that he wasn’t aware the quote came from Mussolini. “It’s a very good quote,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press, adding that he didn’t want to be associated with the dictator. “I didn’t know who said it, but what difference does it make if it was Mussolini or somebody else? It’s a very good quote.”
-February 28, 2016
http://time.com/4240330/donald-trump-benito-mussolini-quote/
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Had a reporter slammed to the ground for trying to cover developing news at his rally
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A Secret Service agent slammed down Time magazine photographer Christopher Morris at a Donald Trump rally Monday in Radford, Virginia, after the journalist tried to cover a protest.
Morris told CNN’s Jim Acosta that he stepped about 18 inches outside the press pen before a guy “grabbed me by the neck and started choking me and slammed me to the ground.”
Independent Journal reporter Joe Perticone wrote that the altercation began when an unidentified agent tried preventing Morris from covering protesters. Morris reportedly responded “Fuck you” to the agent’s command.
In addition to barring and ejecting journalists from rallies, Trump’s campaign has threatened reporters with blacklisting if they leave the designated press area, or pen, to cover newsworthy events happening off stage, such as protests.
The Secret Service has enforced the campaign’s press restrictions, although the agency’s role is to protect the candidate, not limit media access.
-February 29, 2016
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Has black college students ejected out of his rally in Georgia for no reason at all other than that they were black
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Dozens of black college students in Georgia said they were asked to leave a Donald Trump rally on their campus Monday for standing silently on gymnasium bleachers before the business magnate began speaking.
Valdosta State University students said Secret Service agents were told by Trump to remove them, according to Jennifer Jacobs, a Des Moines Register reporter who was at the event.
Secret Service spokesman Robert Hoback told HuffPost the agency does not escort protestors or disruptors out of events. He said the students were asked to leave by local law enforcement and privately hired event staff members.
“I think we got kicked out because we’re a group of black people,” a tearful student said in a video posted by USA Today. “I guess ... they’re afraid we’re going to say something or do something. But we just really wanted to watch the rally. To get kicked out because we’re a group of black people ... shows you how racist our own school is.”
-February 29, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-students-trump-rally-georgia_us_56d501c2e4b0871f60ec98ba
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Dances around not wanting to disavow former KKK leader David Duke as he knows it will hurt him with his base, then proclaims he knows nothing about David Duke despite having run-ins with him for the past 25 years
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A few days before Donald Trump dominated Super Tuesday, the Republican frontrunner was being rebuked left and right for declining to denounce former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
The controversy began Feb. 24, when Duke said that he supports Trump’s candidacy and told listeners of his radio program to "get active" for Trump. Two days later, Trump disavowed Duke in a news conference.
But Trump, who claims to have the "world’s greatest memory," seemed to have forgotten this by Feb. 28. When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about Duke, Trump claimed ignorance four times:
"Well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke. okay? I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don't know.
"I don't know, did he endorse me or what's going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about. …
"I don't know any -- honestly, I don't know David Duke. I don't believe I have ever met him. I'm pretty sure I didn't meet him. And I just don't know anything about him."
Later that day, Trump tweeted a video of his earlier disavowal of Duke, and blamed his failure to do it again on CNN on "a very bad earpiece."
As fellow fact-checkers at the Washington Post and Factcheck.org have pointed out, Trump knew enough about Duke to denounce him several times over the past two decades.
Trump, as we previously noted and as he acknowledged himself, renounced Duke just two days before he told Tapper he knew nothing about the white nationalist.
When a reporter asked about Duke’s support on Feb. 26 (without identifying Duke as a former Klansman), Trump said, "I didn’t even know he endorsed me. David Duke endorsed me? Okay, all right, I disavow, okay?"
And a few months ago, in August 2015, Trump "repudiated" an earlier expression of support from Duke in a Bloomberg interview:
John Heilemann: "We’ve heard this week that David Duke — former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan — has come out and said he’s in support of your candidacy. So my first question is why do people like that like Donald Trump? And second, how do you feel about the David Duke quasi-endorsement?"
Trump: "I don’t know the answer to the first. Who knows why? But I don’t need his endorsement. I certainly wouldn’t want his endorsement. I don’t need anybody’s endorsement. I’m not looking for…"
Heilemann: "Would you repudiate David Duke?"
Trump: "Sure, I would do that if it made you feel better. I would certainly repudiate. I don’t know anything about him. Somebody told me yesterday, whoever he is, he did endorse me. And actually I don’t think it was an endorsement. He said I was absolutely the best of all the candidates. But I wouldn’t want him …"
Fifteen years ago, when Trump was flirting with a White House bid as a Reform Party candidate, he named Duke as a cause of concern at least three times.
In 2000, former wrestler and then-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura broke with the Reform Party because he didn’t want to be associated with the Reform Party’s presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, whom Duke supported.
"Buchanan is an anti-abortion extremist and an unrealistic isolationist," Ventura told the New York Daily News on Feb. 12, 2000. "The latest I hear is that he's now getting support from David Duke. I can't be a part of that and I won't be part of that."
Before he called it quits, Ventura said he consulted with Trump. After Ventura left the party, Trump also named Duke as one of the Reform's "biggest problems" on NBC’s Today Show.
"Well, you've got David Duke just joined — a big racist, a problem. I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party," Trump said on Feb. 14, 2000.
He announced that day that he wouldn’t seek the nomination of the Reform Party, naming Duke as one of his reasons.
"Now I understand that David Duke has decided to join the Reform Party to support the candidacy of Pat Buchanan," Trump wrote in a statement. "So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a Neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a Communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep."
A few days later, Trump himself quit the party and repeated his earlier statement.
"Although I am totally comfortable with the people in the New York Independence Party, I leave the Reform Party to David Duke, Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani. That is not company I wish to keep," Trump wrote in a Feb. 19, 2000, New York Times op-ed.
Even earlier, Trump appeared on CNN on Nov. 19, 1991, and discussed Duke’s defeat in the Louisiana governor’s race and his possibly running against then-President George H.W. Bush. (Duke declared his candidacy as a Republican about a month after Trump’s interview.)
Larry King: "Did the David Duke thing bother you? Fifty-five percent of the whites in Louisiana voted for him. Four hundred New Yorkers contributed."
Trump: "I hate seeing what it represents, but I guess it just shows there's a lot of hostility in this country. There's a tremendous amount of hostility in the United States."
King: "Anger?"
Trump: "It's anger. I mean, that's an anger vote. People are angry about what's happened. People are angry about the jobs. If you look at Louisiana, they're really in deep trouble. When you talk about the East Coast — it's not the East Coast. It's the East Coast, the middle coast, the West Coast."
King: "If he runs and Pat Buchanan runs, might you see a really divided vote?"
Trump: "Well, I think if they run, or even if David Duke — I mean, George (H.W.) Bush was very, very strong against David Duke. I think if he had it to do again, he might not have gotten involved in that campaign because I think David Duke now, if he runs, takes away almost exclusively Bush votes and then a guy like (Mario) Cuomo runs. I think Cuomo can win the election."
King: "But Bush morally had to come out against him."
Trump: "I think Bush had to come out against him. I think Bush — if David Duke runs, David Duke is going to get a lot of votes. Whether that be good or bad, David Duke is going to get a lot of votes."
Our ruling
Trump said, "I don't know anything about David Duke."
Trump seems to have forgotten that he knew enough about Duke to denounce him twice this election cycle. In 2000, he knew enough to criticize Duke’s racism. And in 1991, he knew enough to say he hated what votes for Duke represented.
-March 2, 2016
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So insecure about the size of his penis, he had to tell the country at a televised debate about it
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Donald Trump assured American voters Thursday night that despite what Marco Rubio had suggested, there was "no problem" with the size of his hands -- or anything else.
"Look at those hands, are they small hands?" the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination said, raising them for viewers to see. "And, he referred to my hands -- 'if they're small, something else must be small.' I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee."
-March 4, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/politics/donald-trump-small-hands-marco-rubio/
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Claims he will increase tariffs to get American companies to produce things in America, yet outsources most of his projects and products
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Trump castigates American companies like Apple, Ford, Carrier and Kraft that use their brands to sell goods in the U.S., but produce them in other countries. Indeed, he appears to be so outraged by the practice that he proposes a 15 percent tax on companies for outsourcing jobs and a 20 percent tax for importing goods. More recently, he has spoken of a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports.
Perhaps an even clearer indication of his outrage over outsourcing is that although he loves Oreos, when Nabisco recently moved a plant to Mexico, he swore never to eat one again. Yet despite these deep convictions, when it comes to his own businesses, Trump doesn’t exactly walk the walk.
To see what he actually does, visit his website. Not the campaign website, which puts forward his trade policy proposals to get really tough with China, but Trump.com, the elegant website of the Trump Corporation, which reveals his actual trade practices.
It is immediately clear that many of Trump’s businesses are based not on risking his money and directly creating employment in the United States, but in licensing his brand to help others sell their properties and products. As is now well known, the Trump brand has been used to sell casinos, condominiums, hotels and golf courses at home and abroad, as well as steaks, vodka and a “university” education. Some of these projects have been successful. Others have gone less smoothly, with reports of disappointing sales, bankruptcies, angry customers, broken promises, lawsuits, disputes over fees, hiring illegals and immigrants. Yet Trump has an explanation: He’s a normal businessman making deals, and there are always a few that don’t quite work out. But for exploring whether he puts his moniker where his mouth is when it comes to trade, it’s the branch of the business labeled merchandise that merits closer attention.
So click on the “merchandise” tab to find out where the glittering array of products endorsed by Donald Trump are actually manufactured. With very rare exceptions — a few men’s suits — they are not made in the USA.
-March 8, 2016
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Encourages his supporters to be violent, tells them he will pay for their legal fees
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Racial slurs, nasty rhetoric and violence at Trump rallies have become commonplace against protesters, bystanders, and reporters. Assaults are committed not only by rowdy Trump fans, but by the staff he employs to keep the events safe. But rather than denounce these incidents, Trump is making them part of his brand, and uses them to rev up crowds.
“There may be somebody with tomatoes in the audience,” Trump warned people at a rally in Iowa last month. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.”
Trump has even threatened to personally get in on the action. “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell ya,” he said of a protester on Feb. 22.
Threats against reporters have become so pervasive at Trump rallies that many of those who cover the Republican front-runner seem to have a personal story. As Katy Tur, the Trump embed for NBC News, described in a Tweet, “Trump trashes press. Crowd jeers. Guy by press ‘pen’ looks at us & screams “you’re a bitch!” Other gentleman gives cameras the double bird.”
Things spilled over this week, when Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields said she was pulled down by Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, while attempting to ask the candidate the question. Trump’s campaign denied the incident, going so far as to personally attack Fields because she had reported an assault before. Fields had bruise marks on her arm, and a Washington Post reporter wrote about witnessing the incident.
On Wednesday, meanwhile, a 78-year-old white male audience member at a Trump rally in North Carolina was videotaped sucker-punching a black protester being escorted from the event by police. The man, John McGraw, was later charged with assault and battery. But it was the protester who ended up in handcuffs at the rally.
While that punch and the Lewandowski incident sparked criticism of Trump on Thursday, violence has been an undercurrent — if not an outright characteristic — of Trump rallies for months.
At an October event at the Richmond International Raceway in Virginia, a Republican attendee described seeing an, “irate gentlemen in the crowd spit in another gentleman’s face.” That same month, a student protester was violently dragged out of a Miami rally by his shirt collar. A month later, video showed a gang of men kicking and punching a Black Lives Matter protester at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, a city historically known for a strong Ku Klux Klan presence.
When asked about the Alabama incident, Trump blamed the victim. “Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
In December, multiple incidents of violence were reported at a Trump rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. The New York Times described a man “peppering accusations of fascism with profanity,” who was “forcefully shoved into a metal barrier by a Trump supporter.” A female protester claimed a woman in the crowd punched her after a verbal confrontation.
The next month, a Sikh protester was physically pushed out of a Trump rally in Iowa, while fans yelled, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” The protester described it later as “a fascist rally in a school gym.” Last week, yet another video emerged of grown men at an event in Kentucky forcibly shoving a young black woman.
As long as Trump continues to encourage this violence, it’s not going to stop. The fan charged with assault for sucker-punching a black protester on Wednesday has reportedly expressed no regrets.
“The next time we see him, we might have to kill him,” he said.
-March 10, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-violence_us_56e1f16fe4b0b25c91815913
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Trump supporters yell “Go to Auschwitz” to protesters and then perform Nazi salute, Trump never denounces them
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A Donald Trump supporter shouted, “Go to Auschwitz!” at a rally for the leading Republican candidate in Kansas City, Missouri, on Saturday.
In a video recorded by a Dutch reporter, the man appears to give a Nazi salute as he yells, “Go to Auschwitz! Go to fucking Auschwitz!”
Another Trump supporter also appears to give the “Heil Hitler” salute as she exits the stadium where the Republican candidate held his rally.
-March 13, 2016
http://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-supporter-yells-go-to-auschwitz-after-rally/
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Trump considers himself best foreign policy advisor after consulting himself
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Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has long shied away from naming any foreign policy advisors, suggested Wednesday that he was his own top consultant on the issue. "I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, and I've said a lot of things," Trump said during a telephone interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Trump pointed to his 2000 book, where he made a reference to Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "I know what I'm doing, and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time I'll tell you who the people are," Trump said. "But I speak to a lot of people, but my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff,” he added.
– March 16, 2016
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Xenophobic comments on Muslims, insists forced culture conversion should be norm for refugees, ignores that Norwegian white nationalist Breivik is perpetrator of one of the worst recent terrorist attacks in Europe (Breivik ranks 4th, with bombing by Italian neofascist militants in 1980 ranking 3rd), flip-flops on earlier comments about total shutdown of Muslim immigration
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Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday said Islam is the main source of global terrorism, in the aftermath of attacks in Brussels that left at least 34 dead and more than 100 wounded.
“Frankly, we’re having problems with the Muslims,” he told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. “These attacks are not done by Swedish people. That I can tell you. We have to be smart. We have to look at the mosques and study what’s going on. There is a sick problem going on.” Trump said the incident shows why the U.S. should be wary of Middle Easterners.
“I would be extremely careful about people from the Middle East coming into our country,” he said on “CBS This Morning." "We should be vigilant at our borders.” When pressed for specifics, Trump said he would want "good documentation" from travelers.
Trump said on "CBS This Morning" that Brussels used to be one of the most "beautiful and safest" cities in the world. "Now it's a horror show. There's no assimilation."
Trump said his main focus is on better immigration surveillance, not a total shutdown. "I didn't say shut it down," he said. "I said you have to be very careful. We have to be very, very strong and vigilant at the borders. We have to be tough. We have people who are coming into our country who are undocumented. We have no idea who they are or where they come from. They could be ISIS-related."
– March 22, 2016
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Threatens Ted Cruz about his wife
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Donald Trump escalated his feud with Ted Cruz on Twitter Tuesday — but this time he also involved the Texas senator's wife, who hit back on Wednesday at an impromptu press conference.
The real estate mogul tweeted that the Texas senator should "be careful" or he would "spill the beans on your wife" Heidi Cruz.
"Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!," he tweeted Tuesday evening, just minutes before polls closed in Arizona. Trump tweeted and deleted a similar version of the Tweet about 10 minutes earlier.
-March 24, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/22/politics/ted-cruz-melania-trump-twitter-donald-trump-heidi/
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Trump supporter arrested after police find explosive device in his home after he threatened to kill all Muslims at a Muslim center, Trump still has not denounced him
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William Celli, a 55-year-old man from California, will spend 90 days in jail after being caught in possession of an explosive device and threatening to kill Muslims. Celli took a plea deal that places him on probation for a further three years and bans him from operating an active Facebook profile.
Celli was arrested on Dec. 20, 2015 after yelling “I’m going to kill you all” outside the Islamic Society of West Contra Costa County in Richmond, California. Police later found and detonated an explosive device at Celli’s residence after receiving tips that he was constructing homemade explosives.
Celli had taken to social media in the past to express his admiration of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. “Donald trumps on again I’m happy leaders okay but this guys a great point man I’ll follow this MAN to the end of the world,” Celli wrote on Facebook in October.
-March 26, 2016
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/03/26/3763714/california-man-90-days-2/
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Trump will not fire campaign manager who committed battery against a reporter, says video doesn’t show him touching her when video evidence clearly shows him touching her, blames the victim
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Trump at the town hall also addressed the simple battery charge that has been brought against his campaign manager, standing by the aide and mocking the reporter who brought the complaint, saying she had changed her story about the incident.
Trump said he would not fire the aide, Corey Lewandowski and disputed the woman's initial account of the incident earlier this month in which she said she almost fell to the ground.
"She's not a baby. In her own words, 'I was jolted backwards' ... She wasn't 'yanked down,'" Trump said, referring to a statement made by the reporter Michelle Fields, who worked at the time for Breitbart News, which he said was not reflected in scenes shown on a security tape that has since emerged.
Addressing the incident involving Fields, Trump alleged that she was in fact pushing Trump as he tried to leave a press conference and was brandishing a pen, which he said could have alarmed Secret Service agents protecting him.
He said that Lewandowski had been "unjustly accused."
"It would be so easy for me to terminate this man, ruin his life, ruin his family ... and say you are fired. I have fired many people, especially on 'The Apprentice,'" Trump told moderator Anderson Cooper. "The problem is everybody dumps people when there is a sign of political incorrectness."
-March 30, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/politics/republican-town-hall-highlights/
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Trump supporter pepper spray a 15-year-old girl point-blank in the face after she was groped by another Trump supporter, shout “n****r lover” as she attempts to walk away, Trump still has not denounced the incident
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Police in Janesville, Wisconsin, are searching for two Donald Trump rally attendees who pepper sprayed and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old anti-Trump protester outside the Republican presidential frontrunner’s rally on Tuesday. Video of the incident shows other apparent Trump supporters shouting “bitch” and “nigger lover” to the teenager as she attempts to walk away with pepper spray in her eyes.
“Damn, Donald, back at it again with the white supremacy,” read 15-year-old Alex Drake’s topical protest sign, according to video that captured the incident. As another protester raised a sign that read, “Black Lives Matter,” the crowd of mostly older white Trump supporters began chanting “All lives matter,” attempting to drown out the Janesville teenager.
-March 30, 2016
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Trump says women who have abortions should be punished, later retracts statement after he realizes he can’t walk away unscathed from the statement
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Donald Trump sparked outrage across the ideological spectrum Wednesday with a call to punish women who obtain abortions if the procedure is banned.
Later, however, Trump clarified his position, saying in a campaign statement that, if abortion is banned, "the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb."
The controversy began during a taping of a town hall set to air on MSNBC.
In the the interview, host Chris Matthews pressed Trump on his abortion views.
“I am pro-life, yes,” Trump said after a back-and-forth with Matthews.
Trump continued: “Well, you go back to a position like they had where people would perhaps go to illegal places but you have to ban it."
Matthews then asked Trump, the Republican front-runner, whether a punishment should accompany any outlawing of abortion in the U.S.
"The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment," Trump said.
"For the woman?" Matthews asked.
"Yeah," said Trump, who clarified that any punishment would have to be determined.
-March 30, 2016
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Trump says Geneva Conventions a problem, wants to make changes so US soldiers can commit war crimes
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Donald Trump believes American troops are afraid to fight for fear of violating the Geneva Conventions, he said Wednesday.
“The problem is we have the Geneva Conventions, all sorts of rules and regulations, so the soldiers are afraid to fight,” Trump said at an afternoon town hall during remarks on torture.
“We can’t waterboard, but they can chop off heads,” Trump said, referring to the United States and the Islamic State, respectively. “I think we’ve got to make some changes, some adjustments.”
-March 30, 2016
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Trump slowly begins to realize he’s a moron, apologizes for going after Ted Cruz’s wife on Twitter, realizes he can’t win women if he keeps attacking them
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Donald Trump is calling his decision to tweet that photo of Heidi Cruz a "mistake," an admission that follows several high-profile “misspeak” statements this week on women and abortion.
“Yeah, it was a mistake. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have sent it,” Trump said on the picture that showed Republican opponent Ted Cruz's wife in an unflattering light next to his own wife, Melania Trump, in an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published online Saturday.
Trump appears to acknowledge in the interview that his support among women — Republican women in particular — has taken a nosedive in recent months.
His latest walkback comes at the end of the week in which he at one point said women should receive “some form of punishment” when abortion is made illegal, and then flipped the switch on Friday when he said abortion laws “are set” and “I think we have to leave it that way."
Dowd asked the presidential contender how he can win a general election “with 73 percent of women in this country turned off by him,” to which he responds: “It was 68 percent, actually."
-April 2, 2016
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/donald-trump-heidi-cruz-mistake-221499
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Trump unironically says he wants to be treated fair, ignores that he has yet to treat anyone else with fairness (since the Bible is his “favorite” book: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”)
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Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is again declining to commit to supporting the GOP nominee or rule out running as a third-party candidate if he loses the nomination, declaring he wants to be treated fairly by the party establishment.
"I will be looking at who the nominee is, and I think people will be very happy with my decision," Trump said on "Fox News Sunday."
"I want to run as a Republican," Trump said, adding, "It's not a question of win or lose, it's a question of treatment. I want to be treated fair."
During a televised town hall last week, the New York real estate mogul said he would no longer adhere to a loyalty pledge he signed promising to support the party's eventual nominee. Trump's remaining Republican rivals, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, have also eschewed the pledge.
-April 3, 2016
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/donald-trump-campaign-treated-fair-221505
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Trump flip-flops again on his comment to punish women who have abortions, says he did not give the wrong answer
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Donald Trump gave a “great answer” last week when he said women could be punished for having abortions, he said on Monday evening.
Trump and his campaign last week walked back his comments during an MSNBC town hall, in which he told host Chris Matthews he backed an abortion ban and suggested women who have abortions be punished if the procedure were outlawed. Conservatives were outraged, and within hours, his campaign sent out two statements clarifying that he would punish only abortion providers — not women
“That was a hypothetical question. That was not a wrong answer,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity during his show Monday night in Wisconsin. “There were other people that wrote me letters by the hundreds saying that was a great answer to that question the way it was raised.”
Trump maintained that he is “pro-life,” remarking that “I come with the three exceptions” — for rape, incest and life of the mother.
“You know, I’m pro-life, OK, with the exceptions, but I am pro-life,” he said. “I did the show because it’s not a high-rated show. He’s always been — I mean, he has never treated me very badly. And I didn’t think it was a big thing to do the show, and as a hypothetical question you give a hypothetical answer, and I didn’t see the big, big, huge deal.”
-April 5, 2016
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Trump tells woman that he’ll win women’s votes because he’s the only one who will protect them from terrorists, sidesteps how horribly sexist he is, complains that the media brings his sexism to light too frequently
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Donald Trump on Tuesday touted his strength as a reason women are supporting his candidacy, insisting that female voters are backing the New York businessman because he can protect them from the Islamic State and more.
Trump, appearing on “Fox & Friends,” walked through a diner in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, taking questions from patrons. “How are you gonna change and get the support of more women, like myself?” one woman asked.
“You know, I have so many women that really want to have protection from the standpoint — and they like me for that reason,” Trump said before suggesting he gets bad press regarding women.
“But there is nobody that respects women more than me, and I notice a lot of women are saying that…,” he said, trailing off into another point. “And I don’t get a fair press with the women. I have to say, the press treats me horribly with almost every aspect of life.”
The Republican front-runner said that on Monday night, “so many women” told him they support him because he can protect them. “They were saying, 'We like Donald Trump because we feel he’s going to be the strongest for the country in terms of protection, in terms of the border, in terms of ISIS, in terms of other countries,' and I win by such a margin,” he said. “So that’s protecting women, but it’s also protecting everybody.”
-April 5, 2016
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Trump upset that CIA director says they would not torture people even if ordered to by new president
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Donald Trump is none too pleased with CIA Director John Brennan's recent vow that the United States government would not waterboard even if a future president demanded it.
“Well I think his comments are ridiculous," Trump said in a telephone interview Monday with "Fox & Friends." "I mean, they chop off heads and they drown people in cages with 50 in cage in big steel, heavy cages, drop ‘em right into the water, drown people and we can’t waterboard and we can’t do anything."
Trump went on to suggest that the reason the U.S. cannot defeat the Islamic State is because it cannot operate in a "strong" enough manner.
"We’re playing on different fields, and we have a huge problem with ISIS, which we can’t beat. And the reason we can’t beat them is because we can’t use strong tactics, whether it’s this or other thing," he continued. "So I think his comments are ridiculous. Can you imagine these ISIS people sitting around, eating and talking about this country won’t allow waterboarding and they just chopped off 50 heads?”
-April 11, 2016
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Trump agrees with O’Reilly’s racist statements about African Americans, says they don’t have “spirit”
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Bill O’Reilly interrupted Donald Trump’s claims about how he would create jobs for African-Americans on Monday night to make a louder point: That many of them are “ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads.”
Grilling the Republican front-runner on Fox News’ the O'Reilly Factor, the conservative talk show host asked Trump how he would win over minorities like African Americans.
“I’m telling you, it’s an economic message,” Trump said. “If you look at President Obama, he’s been a president for almost 8 years, it will be 8 years, you have with black youth, with African American youth, you have a 59 percent unemployment."
“But how are you going to get jobs for them?” O’Reilly interjected. “Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it, but it's true. If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to get jobs for people who aren't qualified for jobs?”
“We’re going to bring jobs back,” Trump responded. “We’re going to have Apple computers made in this country, not just…”
O’Reilly pushed back: “But you have to have skills to make Apple computers.”
“It’s more challenging for a poor child in Harlem without parental guidance in a school that’s falling apart than it is for some white kid out in Garden City," he continued. "You say you can bring jobs back, but if the kid isn’t qualified to do the job and can’t do the work – I mean – you’ve got to get into the infrastructure of the African-American community."
“Well it is true. It’s about education, but it’s also about spirit,” Trump said. “A lot of people don’t have spirit. Not only African-Americans, but we don’t have spirit in our country.”
-April 12, 2016
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Donald Trump’s favorite Bible verse is Old Testament “eye for an eye”
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Donald Trump’s favorite Bible verse involves an “eye for an eye,” he said Thursday.
WHAM 1180 AM radio host Bob Lonsberry asked the Republican front-runner if he had a favorite verse or story from the Bible that’s impacted his thinking or character.
“Well, I think many. I mean, you know, when we get into the Bible, I think many. So many,” he responded. “And some people—look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us.”
“And they laugh at our face, and they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our money, they’re taking the health of our country,” he continued. “And we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”
Trump appears to be referring to a passage from Exodus 21-24, which lays out the Old Testament rules governing personal behavior.
“If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows," the passage reads, in the King James translation. "But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
Another passage, Leviticus 24:19-21, reads, "And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death."
Biblical scholars generally interpret "eye for eye," which was derived from the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, as a restriction on retaliation for personal injuries — in other words, only an eye for an eye.
But in Matthew (5:38-42) in the New Testament, Jesus repudiates even that notion. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."
If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
-April 14, 2016
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Trump campaign eager to sweep Lewandowski’s battery against reporter; reporter says she’s had to move apartments due to threats, Republicans of Florida have swept the charges against Lewandowski under the rug so it won’t hurt Trump’s campaign
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Going to the police did drum up what Fields had been seeking: Surveillance video proving that something happened and an official authority, the Jupiter Police, determining that yes, Lewandowski did touch her. After the video was released, the Trump campaign’s story changed. No longer was Fields delusional. Instead, she was now depicted as either having exaggerated the incident or of having presented a bodily threat to Trump sufficient to justify Lewandowski’s reaction.
The latter argument was what ultimately got Lewandowski out of the case. The Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office declined to pursue the charges, saying that while it was clear Lewandowski pulled Fields away, that no Secret Service agents reacted to her presence, and that a legal process could have been avoided had Lewandowski apologized; Lewandowski ultimately was subject to "a reasonable hypothesis of innocence” because he may have been acting to protect the candidate.
But beyond the outcome of the state’s case, which Fields called “disappointing,” Fields said the case was handled "unprofessionally" by the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office.
Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, who was heard on audio recordings with Fields immediately after the incident with Lewandowski, and who wrote his own account of the situation, was never interviewed by the state attorney’s office, Fields said. She also objected to the state attorney’s office using only the affidavit of a retired FBI agent provided by Lewandowski’s legal team to help it determine how the Secret Service protects candidates. (Fields said she was told the state attorney tried to reach out to the Secret Service but was unsuccessful.)
Fields also pointed out that though the assistant county state attorney, Adrienne Ellis, investigated the case, her boss, Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg and his wife, Lynn, have socialized with Trump, and that as a result he should have recused himself entirely.
Lynn Aronberg runs a public relations firm, the website of which prominently displays several photos of her with Trump and Trump’s wife, Melania, (and several other celebrities and politicians). Aronberg addressed his relationship with Trump at a news conference last week, saying he’d been at events with Trump but there were “800 other people” there as well, and that he also has connections to other candidates, such as Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Aronberg himself is a registered Democrat.
“I don’t know if it had anything to do with the decision not to prosecute the case, but I do think it’s a little strange, he sort of downplays it as if there isn’t that big of a connection, but they are at Mar-a-Lago so often. And it appears as though they are part of Palm Beach society,” Fields said. "This is a guy who’s going to run for office I’m sure, they want to cultivate those relationships, and Mar-a-Lago is definitely part of Palm Beach society. I imagine if I was in his position, I’m part of Palm Beach society, I’d feel a little ostracized if I prosecuted Donald Trumps’ campaign manager."
The Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office directed questions about Aronberg’s relationship with Trump to Lynn Aronberg, who denied having any business relationship with the Trumps.
"Donald Trump, his family and companies have never been clients of mine. I have a number of pictures, with clients and non-clients on my website,” Aronberg said in a statement.
The attorney’s office did not comment on Fields’ other complaints. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, though the campaign has said previously that “the matter is now concluded."
Fields said she’s still weighing whether she’ll pursue a defamation case against Lewandowski and Trump; her finances and the potential emotional fallout are factors. Though Lewandowski’s attorney has publicly warned her against doing so under threat of information about her past coming out, Fields said she has “nothing to hide.”
“There’s no question I’ve suffered damages,” Fields said. "I imagine there will be some interesting things that come out ... from the Trump campaign about how they handle this."
-April 20, 2016
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/04/michelle-fields-interview-222193
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Trump says putting Harriet Tubman on $20 is “political correctness,” says she should go on the no-longer-printed $2
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Donald Trump thinks anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman is "fantastic" -- but he says the move to have her replace seventh president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill is "pure political correctness."
"Well, Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it's very rough when you take somebody off the bill," Trump said during a town hall on the "Today" show on NBC Thursday morning. "I think Harriet Tubman is fantastic, but I would love to leave Andrew Jackson or see if we can maybe come up with another denomination."
Trump suggested -- as Ben Carson also has -- that Tubman be put on the $2 bill, which is no longer printed.
The business mogul heaped praise on Jackson, whose presence on the $20 bill was criticized due to his history as a slave-owner and his dismal record on Native American and racial issues, epitomized by the Jackson administration's infamous "Trail of Tears" policy that forcibly relocated the Cherokee people to devastating effect.
-April 21, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/21/politics/donald-trump-tubman-bill-political-correctness/