Category: Unpresidential

Secret Service Investigating Trump Adviser Who Said Hillary Clinton Should Be ‘Shot for Treason’

An adviser to Donald Trump on veterans issues said that Hillary Clinton should be put in a firing line and shot for treason.

New Hampshire state representative Al Baldasaro, who is also a Trump delegate from the state and has appeared with Trump at campaign events, made the comments on the Jeff Kuhner Show.

“I’m a veteran that went to Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I’m also a father who sent a son to war, to Iraq, as a Marine Corps helicopter avionics technician. Hillary Clinton to me is the Jane Fonda of the Vietnam,” he said. “She is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi. She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something’s wrong there.”

“This whole thing disgusts me, Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason,” he added.

Baldasaro has spoken at several Trump events, introducing Trump multiple times, including at an event in late May where he admonished the media for focusing on questions over Trump’s donations to veteran’s charities.

He later added in the radio interview that Clinton was a “piece of garbage.”

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Boston Globe followed up with Baldasaro after BuzzFeed News’ report and he said he stood by his comments.

Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks told NH1 News, “We’re incredibly grateful for his support, but we don’t agree with his comments.”

As first reported by The Daily Beast, the Secret Service is investigating Baldasaro’s comments.

“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation,” a Secret Service spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

(h/t BuzzFeed)

Reality

From promising to help defend supporters who beat up protesters in court, paying for their legal fees, to his campaign manager manhandling a protester, Donald Trump and his campaign has had a long history of supporting violence against those who disagree with them.

Republicans lead one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history. In June, 2016, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report, finding no evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.

While there is no dispute that security was inadequate in Benghazi and that the State Department failed to respond to all requests for security, the total number of security requests cited by Mr. Baldasaro and others in the right-wing media has long been debunked as misleading.

Media

Melania Trump’s Speech Plagiarizes Michelle Obama Speech From 2008

At least one passage in Melania Trump’s speech Monday night at the Republican National Convention plagiarized Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Side-by-side comparisons of the transcripts show the text in Trump’s address following, nearly to the word, the first lady’s own from the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver nearly eight years ago.

The controversy quickly overshadowed the speech. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Earlier in the day, she told NBC’s Matt Lauer: “I wrote it with a little help.”

Manafort denied allegations that Melania Trump plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech on the first night of the Republican National Convention, calling the accusation “just really absurd.”

“There’s no cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech. These were common words and values. She cares about her family,” Manafort said. “To think that she’d be cribbing Michelle Obama’s words is crazy.”

“To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd,” Manafort told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on New Day.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Who knew Melania Trump was such a big fan of Michelle Obama?

Here is a side-by-side transcript with similar portions highlighted.

 Melania Trump, RNC 2016  Michelle Obama, DNC 2008
From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise. And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do.
That you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.
That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son. And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and to pass them on to the next generation.
Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

Sources familiar with the campaign’s handling of Melania Trump’s speech identify top Manafort deputy Rick Gates as the person inside the campaign who oversaw the entire speech process for Melania Trump.

My Little Pony

Republicans have come up with a new excuse for Melania Trump’s convention speech plagiarism. According to the RNC, Mrs. Trump may have lifted phrases from My Little Pony, not First Lady Michelle Obama.

The problem with this claim is that Michelle Obama made her speech in 2008 and My Little Pony was rebooted in 2010.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

There was an internet rumor flying around that Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech plagiarized a self-help book.

Stephen R. Covey in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” listed the exact same principles in the exact same order as Mrs. Obama did as keys to success. He said “There is only one sure means of success. Number one, work hard for what you want in life. Number two, treat your word as your bond and always do what you say you’re going to do. And number three, respect everyone and treat them with dignity even if you don’t know them or agree with them. And always, always, take the opportunity to pass the values on to the next generation.”

Researchers, including this site, looked at 7 Habits, The 8th Habit, and any of Covey’s other books, and were not able to find the passage quoted above, or even any of the central phrases comprising it. In fact, no part of the passage was publicly attributed to Stephen R. Covey before it began turning up on Facebook the day after Melania Trump’s speech, 19 July 2016, which appears to be the date on which it was first published anywhere.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Eg3TKJncQ

Trump Defies Law Forbidding Campaigns From Asking Foreigners for Donations

Donald Trump’s campaign is still soliciting illegal donations from foreign individuals – including members of foreign governments at their official email addresses — weeks after the campaign was put on notice by watchdog groups.

Foreign members of parliament from the United Kingdom and Australia confirmed to The Hill that they received fundraising solicitations from the Trump campaign as recently as July 12 — two weeks after a widely publicized FEC complaint issued on June 29 by non-partisan watchdogs Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center.

These latest campaign finance violations were first reported by the investigative website “WhoWhatWhy” and have been confirmed by The Hill.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Terri Butler, a progressive Parliament member in Australia, told The Hill in a telephone interview Friday night that she was surprised to continue receiving fundraising solicitations from the Trump campaign at her official government email address.

She shared several of these emails, including one dated July 12 asking her to make a “generous contribution” to the Trump campaign.

Butler says she has no idea how her government email ended up on the Trump fundraising list.

“I haven’t signed up to any Trump lists,” she said.

Federal law on foreign money in campaigns is black and white, campaign finance lawyers on both sides of the political divide say.

It’s illegal for foreign individuals, corporations and governments to either give money directly to U.S. candidates or spend on advertising to influence U.S. elections.

And it’s also illegal for candidates to solicit foreign money, regardless of whether the donations ever materialize.

There is now vast documentary evidence that the Trump campaign is continuing to do just that.

Bob Blackman, a member of the U.K. House of Commons, shared with The Hill a fundraising solicitation sent to his government email address from the Trump campaign on July 12.

“I did not sign up, these are sent unsolicited,” Blackman told The Hill in an email.

Another member of the U.K. Parliament, Peter Bottomley, said he’d received three solicitations from the Trump campaign.

“Neither [Trump’s] sons nor anyone else has answered my questions about how they acquired my email nor why they were asking for financial support that I suppose to be illegal for [Trump] to accept,” Bottomley told The Hill in an email.

Fred Wertheimer, president of the campaign finance watchdog Democracy 21, says he’s never in his four-decade career seen a campaign continue to brazenly solicit foreign cash after being publicly called out.

“This is kind of absurd. I don’t know of anyone else in this situation who would just go on keeping on soliciting money from foreign interests,” he said. “I think the fact circumstances here are unprecedented.

“If they are put on notice that their fundraising solicitations of potential foreign donors are illegal and they keep doing it, then you potentially have knowing and willful violations of the law which moves this from civil violations to criminal violations,” Wertheimer continued.

Wertheimer said he’s going to assess the latest facts and may launch a criminal complaint in addition to his standing FEC complaint.

“It’s open and shut that federal candidates can’t solicit contributions from foreign donors,” he said.

“There’s a kind of arrogance about this,” Wertheimer added.

Larry Noble, the general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, said the Trump campaign’s foreign solicitations are “really outrageous.”

“It is a serious violation of federal law to solicit political contributions from foreign nationals,” he said.

“There is no reason this should be happening,” he added. “While U.S. citizens do live abroad, they usually don’t have foreign government email addresses or are members of parliament, so they can’t try to explain this by saying they thought they were soliciting U.S. citizens abroad.

“If the Trump campaign has continued to solicit foreign nationals after the matter first came to light in June, this looks like either gross incompetence, gross negligence or willful conduct.”

(h/t The Hill)

Media

Links

Copy of Trump campaign email.

Trump Jumps To Conclusions Minutes After Nice Attack

In back-to-back interviews with Fox News hosts Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump condemned Muslims and immigrants for a horrific truck attack in the French resort town of Nice, France that occurred late Thursday.

No terror group or organization has yet claimed responsibility after 77 people were killed and about 100 injured when a truck plowed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day fireworks. When Van Susteren asked Trump to contrast what Obama would say about the attack with what he would say, Trump immediately cited “radical Islamic terrorism” as a potential cause, then said “I don’t think the people come out of Sweden, okay? It’s probably, possibly but if it is indeed, radical Islamic terrorism, it’s about time that [Obama] would say so, okay?”

“I mean, it just happened now,” Trump admitted, before speculating that the attack could have been carried out by a Muslim as in “Orlando, like in San Bernardino, like in Paris, like in the World Trade Center, like many other places, if it’s radical Islamic terrorism.”

Even if the attacks are ultimately linked to Muslim or immigrants, Trump was speaking as a presidential nominee just minutes after the attack, when none of this information was known.

During his interview with O’Reilly, Trump appeared to backtrack a bit on his earlier comments, telling the host that we should “wait a little while, and let’s see what happens. Who knows? Maybe you will be surprised and maybe we will all be surprised” in the truck attack.

But in the same breath, Trump bashed the refugee process into the United States, claiming that the country will admit at least 10,000 unscreened Syrian refugees by the end of the fiscal year.

“They may be ISIS,” Trump said, alluding to the terror group Islamic State. “This could be the great Trojan horse of all time. I mean, this could be the ultimate Trojan horse.”

Syrian refugees actually undergo one of the most stringent processes to come to the United States, which can take anywhere between 18 and 24 months. The process requires at least 21 steps in which biographic information, biometrics, and documentation are shown and put under scrutiny.

Trump has long claimed that Muslims and immigrants could bring criminal activities to the United States. In fact, he launched his campaign by deriding Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers. Soon after Paris was under siege from a terror attack, Trump called for a ban on Muslims immigrating into the United States, later adding that Muslims should be put into a database so that they can be tracked. He has also condemned resettling Syrian refugees in the country, using a similar argument that they lack documentation.

On the basis of this speculation, Trump said he agreed that this was now a “world war scenario” and, as president, he would seek a formal declaration of world war from Congress.

“I would. I would,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If you look at it, this is war, coming from all different parts. And frankly, it’s war and we’re dealing with people without uniforms. You know, in the old days, you would have uniforms. You knew who you were fighting.”

Trump then pivoted to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s U.S. immigration policies that would potentially allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.

“These people — we are allowing people into our country, who we have no idea where they are, where they are from, who they are, they have no paperwork, they have no documentation in many cases and Hillary Clinton wants to allow 550 percent more in than even Obama,” he added.

Prior to the interviews, Trump tweeted that he would postpone the announcement of his vice presidential candidate, originally set for Friday.

(h/t Think Progress)

Reality

7/14 at 5:44 PM ET, Fox News reported a large truck had been driven through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing dozens.

7/14 at 7:20 PM ET, Donald Trump phoned into live coverage of the attack on Fox News.

7/16 at 4:00 AM ET, two days later, ISIS released a statement claiming the attack as an outright act of ISIS, but noting that the attacker was responding to calls to act.

7/16 at 8:00 AM ET, French investigators found a possible, but yet unconfirmed connection to Jabhat al Nusra, an al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

While this has the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, and may possibly be the case, there are potentially thousands of other possibilities to consider before actual facts from a formal investigation are even established. Have we learned nothing from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the basis of weapons of mass destruction? At the time, Republican President George W. Bush ignored timelines from UN weapons inspectors to perform their jobs, fabricated evidence, and rushed to judgement which left us with an inter-generational quagmire.

We should expect our leaders to have cool heads and sound judgement in the face of adversity, which was not on display here from Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Media

On the Record with Greta Van Sustern Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g09jgCY1PDM

Bill O’Reilly Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUe9FX_K84k

Trump Surrogate Newt Gingrich Wants “Religious Test” For American Muslims

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and current Trump advisor and surrogate has suggested testing all US Muslims to see if they believe in Sharia, and deporting those who do.

Gingrich said in an interview on “Hannity” on Fox News:

Let me be as blunt and direct as I can be. Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Shari‘a, they should be deported. Shari‘a is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Shari‘a, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door.

The former Republican presidential contender’s comments were in response to the attack in Nice, France that left at least 84 people dead.

Gingrich later tried to backtrack those comments saying:

“This is not about targeting a particular religion or targeting people who practice in a particular way,” he added. “This is about looking at particular characteristics that we have learned painfully, time after time, involve killing people, involve attacks on our civilization.”

*cough *cough bullshit *cough *cough

(h/t BBC)

Reality

The idea to target a single religion for a litmus test to see how “patriotic” their members run counter to every idea that the founding fathers envisioned for this country. It is without a doubt the most un-American suggestion one can have. So it comes to no surprise that Fox News is definitely on board.

The very first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America explains in its Establishment Clause that there will be freedom from governmental interference of worship.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Many in the West believe Shari‘a to be a brutal system of retributive justice, but really it is a broad term for the set of ethical principles inscribed in the Quran that means different things to different adherents. As TIME reported in the wake of Orlando, “Demonizing every Muslim by equating Shari‘a and terrorism is akin to describing every Christian as a radical fundamentalist; the Bible can also be interpreted as requiring brutal punishments for archaic offenses.”

Fun Fact: In 1997, Newt Gingrich was the first Speaker of the House to ever be disciplined for an ethics violation and was forced to resign as Speaker in 1998 because of his failed leadership.

Media

Trump Seeks $10M From Former Staffer Over Nondisclosure Agreement

Donald Trump is insisting that aides stick to confidentiality agreements — so much so that he is suing a former campaign consultant for $10 million, his lawyer said.

“He’s violated his agreement and you know we have taken swift and appropriate action,” Alan Garten, executive vice president and general counsel at The Trump Organization, told USA TODAY. “We intend to pursue this to the very end.”

Court documents obtained by the Associated Press indicate Sam Nunberg has been accused by Trump of leaking confidential information to reporters in violation of his non-disclosure agreement. Nunberg, in response, accuses the Republican candidate of “a misguided attempt to cover up media coverage of an apparent affair” between senior campaign staffers.

Reports the AP:

“The document cited a New York Post story about a public quarrel between the staffers published last month.

“The legal dispute reflects Trump’s efforts to aggressively protect the secrecy of his campaign’s inner workings. The case is spelled out in court documents that sought to block private arbitration proceedings that Trump initiated in May.”

Garten called Nunberg “a disgruntled former consultant” and said that after the original arbitration was filed “Nunberg asked for his job back.”

(h/t USA Today, Page Six)

Reality

Sam Nunberg has filed sensational legal papers against the presidential hopeful’s campaign, alleging he was wrongly accused of leaking a story to Page Six about a “lovers’ quarrel” between the mogul’s publicist and campaign manager.

Nunberg, who worked as a strategic adviser for Trump but was fired last year, claims in the papers that, because he then endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, the Trump campaign is “attempting to bring a frivolous and retaliatory arbitration proceeding against me essentially to punish me and shut me up.”

Things further soured between him and the Trump campaign after Page Six exclusively reported in May on a public “screaming row” between the mogul’s polarizing former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, 42, and Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, 27, who deny rumors they had an affair. Lewandowski is married with four kids.

Nunberg says in his response filed in New York Supreme Court,

“The Trump campaign is misguidedly and improperly attempting to use the sword of private arbitration proceeding against me to silence media coverage of a loud and angry argument on a public street between its former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski … and a female Trump campaign staffer, concerning their sordid and apparently illicit affair, which … was witnessed by another Trump campaign staffer, as reported in the New York Post, Page Six.”

Nunberg also claims that there were many witnesses to the “lovers’ quarrel” that took place at 61st Street and Third Avenue, which he describes as “a public inappropriate display by the former campaign manager and, upon information and belief, his paramour.”

He continues, “I did not provide the New York Post with any information concerning that embarrassing and lurid event … [I] learned of it … long after my consulting agreement had been terminated … This tawdry public incident between Mr. Lewandowski and a female Trump campaign staffer occurred well after the termination of my consulting agreement.”

Nunberg claims the Trump campaign has falsely used the Page Six story as an excuse to accuse him of breaching his confidentiality agreement. He alleges Lewandowski “used as a pretext an eight year old Facebook post to have me terminated … [he] and other staff members colluded to leak the Facebook post to the press.” Nunberg denied making the racially charged posts about the Rev. Al Sharpton’s daughter and another calling President Obama a “Socialist Marxist Islamo Fascist Nazi Appeaser.”

However several websites had reported and captured Nunberg’s many racist social media posts.

Of his decision to back Cruz, Nunberg — who started working for Trump in 2011 and says he ghost-wrote many of the outspoken mogul’s political tweets — adds, “I am ready, willing and able to defend myself against such claims … the ridiculous nature of the Trump campaign’s irrational and vindictive assault against me simply for exercising my fully justified and constitutionally protected rights to change political allegiance and vote as I choose.”

Nunberg has filed a motion to stay the confidential arbitration, initiated by the Donald Trump campaign organizations. Nunberg also wants to make the proceedings public.

CNN’s Corey Lewandowski Is Still Being Paid By Donald Trump

Former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is still being paid by the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s campaign while simultaneously drawing a salary as a CNN contributor to discuss the candidate on-air, according to the network.

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and host Don Lemon noted that Lewandowski is “still receiving severance from the Trump campaign” while introducing him in July 11 and July 12 segments.

These references appear to be the first time CNN has disclosed the severance payments even though Lewandowski was hired nearly three weeks ago, raising questions about when the network became aware that its commentator was still being paid by his former employer.

Media observers have harshly criticized CNN over Lewandowski’s hiring pointing to his non-disclosure and likely non-disparagement agreements with the Trump campaign as “profoundly disturbing” ethical conflicts. Since his hiring, Lewandowski has by his own admission continued to advise the Trump campaign, even pushing a camera away from the candidate during a campaign stop.

In his on-air appearances, Lewandowski has acted more like a spokesman for the campaign than as an independent commentator, defending all of Trump’s actions in a way that, as one Washington Post reporter noted, indicates he “has not yet transitioned out of his role as a Trump employee.”

That pattern continued during the segments in which CNN revealed that he is receiving severance from the campaign. In his New Day appearance on July 11, Lewandowski defended Trump from criticism of his reference to a perceived supporter as “my African-American” by stating, “The way Mr. Trump talks, anybody who knows him, and I know him very well, he’d say, my Corey. You’re my Corey. That’s a term of endearment. It’s not a pejorative term.” In his CNN Tonight appearance on July 12, his statements about Trump’s beliefs about race in America led Lemon to interject, “don’t give me talking points.”

The network’s defenders have pointed out that political operatives regularly join the ranks of paid on-air pundits, and noted that CNN also employs contributors with ties to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But employing a contributor who continues to be paid by the candidate whose performance and positions he is being asked to analyze appears unprecedented.

(h/t Media Matters)

Reality

As campaign manager, Lewandowski banned news organizations from rallies and maintained Trump’s media blacklist, which includes The Washington Post, as well as BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, Politico, the Des Moines Register and many others. His hostility included CNN at least once. Noah Gray, a CNN producer covering Trump, tweeted last November that as he filmed the crowd’s reaction to a protester at a rally, Lewandowski ordered him “inside the pen or I’ll pull your credentials.”

Media

Media Matters

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Calls Trump a ‘Faker,’ He Says She Should Resign

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s well-known candor was on display in her chambers late Monday, when she declined to retreat from her earlier criticism of Donald Trump and even elaborated on it.

“He is a faker,” she said of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. “He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

She has been surprisingly outspoken about the presidential election in recent days, starting Friday, when she told The Associated Press “everything would be up for grabs” if Donald Trump were to win the White House.

In an interview published Sunday, she told The New York Times that she couldn’t picture America under a Trump presidency.

“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” she said. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

“At first I thought it was funny,” she said of Trump’s early candidacy. “To think that there’s a possibility that he could be president … ” Her voice trailed off gloomily.

“I think he has gotten so much free publicity,” she added, drawing a contrast between what she believes is tougher media treatment of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and returning to an overriding complaint: “Every other presidential candidate has turned over tax returns.”

Trump responded Wednesday morning by calling on Ginsburg to resign.

Ginsburg was appointed to the high court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, and is now the senior member of the liberal wing and leading voice countering conservative Chief Justice Roberts. She has drawn a cult-like following among young people who have nicknamed her The Notorious R.B.G., a play on American rapper The Notorious B.I.G.

(h/t CNN, Politico)

Reality

In the case of Trump v. Ginsburg, The New York Times and Washington Post’s editorial boards are siding with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Put simply, the Times ruled that Trump is right. “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling,” its editorial board wrote Wednesday.

Following Trump’s criticism of a federal judge over his Mexican heritage, the Times found it “baffling that Justice Ginsburg would choose to descend toward his level and call her own commitment to impartiality into question,” the newspaper wrote. “Washington is more than partisan enough without the spectacle of a Supreme Court justice flinging herself into the mosh pit.”

The Washington Post concurred with the Times’ opinion and even Ginsburg’s statements to the media, which the newspaper said it didn’t find surprising.

“However valid her comments may have been, though, and however in keeping with her known political bent, they were still much, much better left unsaid by a member of the Supreme Court,” its editorial board wrote.

The Post cited the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges, which states that judges shouldn’t publicly endorse or oppose any candidate for public office, and argued that any politicization — real or not — undermines the public’s faith in an impartial court.

“As journalists, we generally favor more openness and disclosure from public figures rather than less,” the Post wrote. “Yet Justice Ginsburg’s off-the-cuff remarks about the campaign fall into that limited category of candor that we can’t admire, because it’s inconsistent with her function in our democratic system.”

Donald Trump Claims He’s Seen People Calling for Moments of Silence for the Dallas Shooter

During two separate discussions of Black Lives Matters protests on Tuesday, Donald Trump claimed that people have called for moments of silence for Micah Johnson, the gunman who killed five police officers in Dallas and injured nine others, without specifying who or where.

On an O’Reilly Factor segment filmed earlier in the day, Trump expressed disgust with the actions of the officers who shot Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and said it “could be” that police treat African-Americans differently, but criticized the Black Lives Matter movement as “dividing America.” Trump then said:

“I saw what they’ve said about police at various marches and rallies. I’ve seen moments of silence called for for this horrible human being who shot the policemen.”

Asked by the Fox News host if there was a divide between blacks and whites in America, Trump used this as an example of how “there would seem to be.” Then Trump went on to say:

“It’s getting more and more obvious and it’s very sad, very sad. When somebody called for a moment of silence to this maniac that shot the five police, you just see what’s going on. It’s a very, very sad situation.”

Trump repeated the claim Tuesday night, saying at a rally in Indiana:

“The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage. Marches all over the United States—and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!”

(h\t Gawker)

Reality

No news reports appear to corroborate his claim and on social media, news agencies have reached out to the Trump campaign for comment and have not yet heard back.

  • Gawker could only find two posts asking for a moment of silence for Johnson. No video.
  • Talking Points Memo found searches on social media for people making such calls came up short, with no evidence of video.
  • ABC News has been able to find one person who posted on two of his social media accounts calling for a moment of silence, but no evidence of video.
  • Trump advisor Sam Clovis was forced to admit he had not witnessed what Trump said he has witnessed on CNN.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has made false claims of ethnic groups praising a tragedy.

In November 2015, Trump repeatedly defended his debunked claim that thousands of Muslims were celebrating in the streets of New Jersey after 9/11. Of course this also turned out to not be true.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YlVyC4N87o

Full speech, 7/12/16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewMhP-V1ed8

Trump Defends Constitution Articles That Do Not Exist

Republican Rep. Mark Sanford said Friday that Donald Trump has a “callous disregard for details” that was on full display when the GOP presidential candidate told a private meeting of House Republicans he would fiercely defend articles of U.S. Constitution that don’t exist.

“I think what a number of us have been concerned about is a pattern of laxity with regard to details,” Sanford told CNN in an interview, explaining that details are critical to good governance, one day after he was part of a group meeting with the presumptive Republican presidential candidate. “It is the details that really matter in impacting people’s lives. It is the details that matter frankly in any legislative negotiation.”

The South Carolinian lawmaker, who has been critic of Trump, said that lack of respect for details could make it difficult for the businessman to be a successful president.

“I wasn’t particularly impressed,” Sanford told reporters after Thursday’s meeting at an event. “I think it was the normal stream of consciousness that’s long on hyperbole and short on facts. At one point there was mentioned — somebody asked about, you know, Article I powers and what would you do to protect them and you know, I think his response was ‘I want to protect Article I, Article II, Article XII — go down the list.’ As we both know there is no Article XII.”

Trump’s answer came in response to a question from a House Republican about whether Trump as president would defend the prerogatives of Congress that are laid out in Article I of the Constitution. The issue is highly important to lawmakers who are frustrated by the powers of the presidency, which are defined in Article II of the Constitution but that have expanded in recent years by the increased use of executive authority.

There are a total of just seven articles to the Constitution although there are many more amendments to the founding document, which could be what Trump was referring to accidentally.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNN for a comment about the apparent gaffe in the meeting or Sanford’s concerns.

When Trump made his comments “a number of people looked around at each other at that point with a little bit of a quizzical or curious eye,” Sanford told CNN Friday.
Sanford, who still hasn’t decided if he will back his party’s presumptive nominee, acknowledged Trump has successfully connected with voters even as he glosses over the minutia of governing.

“I would say we all love broad sweeping statements. They’re pleasant. At times they’re amusing, at times they’re interesting, but in terms of making a difference in people’s lives, it’s the details that matter,” Sanford said.

Sanford also defended Trump.

While “there seems to be a deliberate lack of detail” from the candidate, there is not “malfeasance” — as Sanford said was on display Thursday in a House committee that was examining Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email usage while running the State Department.

“What we’re left with is a Faustian choice between malfeasance and very callous disregard for details,” Sanford said.

In the meeting with House Republicans, Trump repeatedly stressed the importance of a Republican winning the White House because of the balance of power on the Supreme Court. In the end, Sanford suggested that issue might be enough to tilt him to vote for Trump, something initially he didn’t think he would do.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Sadly this is not the first time Donald Trump displayed a lack of understanding of the United States Constitution, government functions, or how laws work.

 

 

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