Category: Unpresidential

Trump’s Son: Tax Returns ‘Detract’ from Political Message

Donald Trump’s son has a new reason to explain why his father won’t release his tax returns: They’ll steal from his political message.

“Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from (his father’s) main message,” Donald Trump, Jr. told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in a piece published Wednesday.

That’s a dramatic shift from the Republican nominee’s longtime explanation that an ongoing audit is preventing him from releasing his tax returns. (There are no laws barring Trump from disclosing his tax returns while he is being audited).

The comment reflects the political potency of Trump’s tax returns. There are growing questions about what’s in the documents, including details of investments in foreign countries. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, said Thursday that presidential candidates should release their tax returns.

“I released mine,” Ryan said. “I think we should release our returns. I’ll leave it to him when to do it.”

Former Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, sought to connect Trump Jr.’s comments with the campaign’s longtime audit explanation. In a Thursday interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room,” Kingston said releasing the tax returns could influence the IRS audit process.

“If you put it on the table, you’re going to have 300 million Americans second-guessing what is this, what is that?” Kingston said. “That actually, I think, would influence the IRS because they would say, ‘Oh, wait, somebody out in Idaho said this. Somebody in Chicago said that. Somebody in New York said this.’ Then they’re off chasing things.”

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday that putting out the returns would lead to misinterpretations.

“With a $10 billion business, if Donald Trump dumped his taxes out today, there would be all kinds of misinterpretations of that and maybe some real interpretations of that between now and November. That would be the only discussion we’d have,” King, a Trump supporter, said on “New Day.” “So I’d say the window is closed on that but I wish he had done so last March or April.”

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has released nearly four decades of tax returns.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump had a contradictory position 4 years ago when he demanded Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.

As for the “audit” excuse, the fact remains that this rationale has never made any sense: an IRS audit doesn’t preclude someone from sharing their returns.

Since Watergate, every presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has released his or her tax returns. It’s not required by law, but there’s a tradition of disclosure that Americans have come to count on during the presidential vetting process: candidates for the nation’s highest office are expected to release information related to their personal health and their tax filings.

Indeed even Richard Nixon, during his presidency, released his tax materials in the midst of an IRS audit. Trump could, if he wanted to, release these returns whenever he feels like it. For reasons he won’t explain, the GOP candidate just doesn’t want to.

It’s as if the campaign has decided to wave a big, unmistakable sign that reads, “We have something to hide.”

Trump Claims Clinton Coined Term ‘Alt-Right’, This is Not True

Trump and alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog kissing.

In an interview on Trump’s plane in Canton, Ohio, Trump tried to blame Clinton and her allies for creating the term “alt-right,” although the term has been used within the movement for years.

Clinton and her campaign argue that some Trump backers are racist and misogynistic and have sought to link him to the “alt-right” movement of self-avowed white nationalists, many of whom have rallied around his candidacy.

“The alt-right. You know they came up with the term ‘alt-right.’  I think the term itself is ridiculous. The alt-right. When did it come into existence? It was just made up.”

Later in the interview Trump said he was unconcerned that moderators during the upcoming debates may decide to fact-check during the forums.

“I don’t care. My facts are good. My facts are good. I don’t get enough credit for having my facts right,” Trump said. “They’ll say I’m wrong even when I’m right.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

Trump rarely gets his facts right. We have over 150 instances of Trump not getting his facts right and we’re positive we missed quite a few.

The term “alt-right”, or Alternative Right, was not created by Hillary Clinton but was coined in 2008 by Richard Bertrand Spencer, who heads the white nationalist think tank known as the National Policy Institute, to describe a loose set of far-right ideals centered on “white identity” and the preservation of “Western civilization.

The alt-right movement is associated with white nationalism, white supremacism, antisemitism, right-wing populism, nativism, and the neoreactionary movement and wholeheartedly embrace the overt racism, misogyny, neo-Nazi affectations, bullying and trolling of chan culture as a lifestyle

Donald Trump famously hired alt-right leader and former Breitbart editor as his campaign CEO, signaling his embrace of the movement and pushing hate and racism into the mainstream.

Trump Defiant, Won’t Say Obama Was Born in United States

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in an interview in Canton, Ohio that he remains unwilling to say that President Obama is born in the United States, that he is more bullish than ever on his chances to win and that he is not exploring the launch of a new media company in case he loses the race.

Trump also made a far-from-subtle push — in the interview and in a letter from his doctor released Thursday — to be seen as vigorous and healthy as his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, returned to the campaign trail after being treated for mild pneumonia.

In the interview, conducted late Wednesday aboard his private plane as it idled on the tarmac here, Trump suggested he is not eager to change his pitch or his positions even as he works to reach out to minority voters, many of whom are deeply offended by his long-refuted suggestion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Trump refused to say whether he believes Obama was born in Hawaii.

“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

When asked whether his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was accurate when she said recently that he now believes Obama was born in this country, Trump responded: “It’s okay. She’s allowed to speak what she thinks. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on other things.”

He added: “I don’t talk about it anymore. The reason I don’t is because then everyone is going to be talking about it as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security.”

In the interview, Trump defended his wife’s immigration history; attacked targets including CNN host Anderson Cooper and Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.); and said he had been “respectful” since Clinton fell ill but “that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stay there.”

Sitting in his plush, cream-and-gold cabin as his top aides looked on, Trump began by repeatedly recounting his poll numbers, which have ticked up nationally and in some key states.

Trump said a possible turning point in the race came last week when Clinton said that “half” of his supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables” — a remark she has since said she regrets.

“It’s the single biggest mistake in this political cycle, a massive comment, bigger than 47 percent,” Trump said, a reference to Mitt Romney’s controversial 2012 statement at a fundraiser about voters who receive government benefits or pay little in taxes. “When I first heard it, I couldn’t believe that she said it.”

Clinton and her campaign argue that some Trump backers are racist and misogynistic and have sought to link him to the “alt-right” movement of self-avowed white nationalists, many of whom have rallied around his candidacy.

Trump was a leading and vocal proponent of the debunked conspiracy theory that the nation’s first black president was born overseas and thus not eligible for the White House. Obama released his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate in 2011, but Trump has never disavowed his earlier claims.

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

First of all, President Obama was born in Hawaii. Shut up.

The first idea that Barack Obama was not a naturally born citizen can actually be traced back to 2004 with the loony racist ravings of Judah Benjamin and Andy Martin. But the origins of the birther conspiracy theory for the 2008 presidential cycle did indeed start with supporters of Hillary Clinton, but there is no evidence that it came from Clinton directly. Most of the noise from the idiot birther conspiracy theorists came after Jun 13, 2008, days after Clinton ended her campaign on June 7, 2008.

While it is true there was some hand from Clinton supporters, the idea that she started it or was “all in” as Trump claimed, is pure fiction.

Donald Trump Jr. Casually Makes A Holocaust Joke

Donald Trump’s son, a primary surrogate for his presidential candidacy, alluded on Thursday to the mass killing of Jewish people in Nazi Germany while laying out what he sees as a media double standard in campaign coverage.

In an interview with Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, Donald Trump Jr. made the argument that Republicans would be punished if they lied or schemed in fashions similar to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And then he decided to talk about gas chambers.

“The media has been her number one surrogate in this. Without the media, this wouldn’t even be a contest, but the media has built her up,” Trump Jr said. “They’ve let her slide on every indiscrepancy (sic), on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”

A reference to gas chambers is the type of remark that under typical campaign conventions would be met with profound rebuke and alarm. But while criticism came in quickly on Twitter, a senior member of the Republican National Committee still blasted out the interview.

Trump Jr. has gone down similar paths before. As the group RightWingWatch noted, he has “posted an image to Instagram that included “Pepe the frog,” which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a meme “constantly used by white supremacists” and “appeared on a radio show with James Edwards, host of the white supremacist radio show Political Cesspool.”

The Trump campaign has also been accused in the past of pushing anti-Semitic memes. Donald Trump himself got into trouble over the summer for tweeting an image of Clinton pasted over money with a Jewish star badge next to her.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Update

Trump Jr. told NBC News that he was referring to corporal punishment, not the Holocaust. The reaction from some anti-Semitic Trump supporters on Twitter, however, suggests that they comfortably took it as a Holocaust reference.

Media

Trump Ditches, Then Mocks His Press Corps

Donald Trump on Thursday mocked his traveling press corps for being late to his rally, even though his campaign is responsible for arranging the pool’s travel.

“I have really good news for you,” the Republican nominee told supporters here, according to a livestream of the rally this and other pool reporters watched on a bus from the airport to the event location.

“I just heard the press is stuck on their airplane. They can’t get here. I love it. So they’re trying to get here now. They’re going to be about 30 minutes late. They called us and said could you wait? I said absolutely not. Let’s get going, New Hampshire.”

While television cameras continued to roll live on the rally, still photographers already at the venue opted not to shoot any images of the event out of solidarity with their pool colleagues.

“This is completely ridiculous and unacceptable. This has gone on for way to long and it’s time we take a stand,” said one member of the traveling press.

“The press corps is at a boiling point here and was more frustrated tonight than ever,” said another.

“There’s the want to do something among traveling press of course – being constantly mocked and demonized is awful – but there’s the competing feeling that news organizations have almost let too much slide to have any bargaining power at this point,” said a third member of Trump’s traveling press corps.

The reporters said they had yet to receive an explanation or response as to why they were left behind. Spokespeople for the campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

Some members of the traveling press considered not covering the event in an attempt to boycott, but their efforts were unsuccessful as management from various networks pushed back. Plus, the event was being carried live by the network pool, meaning Trump’s image was still being broadcast on television.

Trump, who blacklisted individual reporters and several news organizations (including POLITICO) until last Thursday, has made a habit of using the media as a punching bag while still largely enjoying saturation campaign coverage from television networks.

Trump has also criticized Hillary Clinton for avoiding the press. After going more than 260 days without holding a news conference, the Democratic nominee has repeatedly taken questions from the press in the past week, including in Greensboro, North Carolina, Thursday afternoon.

Clinton also began traveling on the same plane as her press pool two weeks ago, while Trump still travels without his.

Trump is the first candidate to go so long into a campaign season without traveling with his press corps. Neither campaign has the full-on protective pool that is with the candidate from the moment they leave their home or hotel until they return, but Clinton has a quasi-protective pool, meaning she does travel with the media on the same plane. Trump’s press pool travels separately.

Members of the media pay extra to travel on the campaign-arranged press planes and buses, with the distinct purpose of making sure they arrive on time and with the candidate to events, versus arranging their own travel. But this is far from the first time Trump left his press pool behind. In late August, when Trump traveled to Mexico meet the country’s president, he left his pool behind in Arizona. Earlier that same month, when Trump went to Baton Rouge to survey flood damage, the traveling press were also not invited. Trump said that the trip would be “non-political” with no press, but the visit was still featured prominently by all of the major outlets.

Trump took off from LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, shortly after taping an appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” late Thursday afternoon.

His press plane did not leave a different airport in Teterboro, New Jersey, until after 7:30 p.m. because some reporters who pooled Trump’s appearance on “Tonight Show” were caught in traffic leaving Manhattan.

Based on the final three minutes of Trump’s remarks, all the press pool was able to hear in person, it sounded like the GOP nominee stuck to the same scripted stump speech he’s been delivering over the past week.

(h/t Politico)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YykQ5NEs3fU

Trump Goes After African-American Pastor Who Shut Him Down for Politicking

Donald Trump on Thursday slammed the pastor who interrupted him onstage during Wednesday remarks at a Michigan church.

In a telephone interview with “Fox and Friends,” the Republican presidential nominee accused the pastor of the church in Flint, Michigan, of planning to come onstage to cut off his remarks when he addressed her congregation on Wednesday.

“When she got up to introduce me she was so nervous, she was shaking,” Trump said. “And I said, ‘Wow this is sort of strange.’ And then she came up. So she had that in mind. There was no question about it.”

He added: “She was so nervous. She was like a nervous mess. And so I figured something was up. Really.”

Several minutes into Trump’s remarks at Bethel United Methodist Church on Wednesday, Rev. Faith Green-Timmons reminded the real-estate mogul that the event was intended to focus on the water-crisis recovery in Flint, where state cost-cutting measures resulted in lead contamination in the city’s water supply.

“Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for what we’ve done for Flint, not to give a political speech,” Green-Timmons said.

“Oh, OK, OK, OK, that’s good,” Trump said. “Then I’m going to go back on to Flint.”

Trump then told Fox and Friends, “The audience was saying, ‘Let him speak, let him speak!’ ”

That isn’t true. In fact, several audience members began to heckle Trump, asking pointed questions about whether he racially discriminated against black tenants as a landlord. (Which he did several times, even after being caught and punished.)

(h/t Business Insider)

Reality

How is Trump’s much-hyped outreach to African-Americans going again?

Media

Video Shows Aftermath of 69-Year-Old Woman Punched at a Trump Rally

Dramatic video has emerged of people chasing down a man believed to have punched a 69-year-old woman on oxygen at a Donald Trump rally, showing the escalation of emotions from both protesters and supporters.

Shirley Teeter told a local ABC News affiliate that she attended the event in Asheville, N.C., to protest Trump. She recalls telling supporters outside the rally that they should start learning Russian — alluding to Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then, she said, a man in front of her turned around and punched her in the jaw, knocking her down onto her backpack containing her metal oxygen tank.

“He turned around and just cold-cocked me,” she said.

Police issued a warrant for the man’s arrest on charges of assault.

(h/t LA Times)

Reality

Deplorable

Media

Waring: Not safe for work.

Trump Declares He Would Start a War Over Iranian Ships Bothering American Ships

Donald Trump said Friday night that he would shoot Iranian vessels “out of the water” if they bother American ships.

“Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water,” the GOP presidential candidate said at a campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida.

is comments follow the fifth time in about a month that Iranian boats have harassed US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf.

The US Navy has fired defensive warning shots, but not “shot [them] out of the water,” as Trump would like.

Military analysts suspect the Iranian fast-attack craft have been conducting such maneuvers mainly because they are unhappy with the US nuclear deal — an agreement Trump also opposes.

Earlier this week, the real-estate mogul also released his plan for the military if elected president.

It calls for 540,000 active-duty Army soldiers, 350 Navy ships, 1,200 combat-ready Air Force jets, and 36 Marine Corps battalions — numbers he reiterated at the rally Friday night. On the technology side, Trump calls for a modernization of the missile-defense system.

This buildup will likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to Military Times.

The US military, Trump said, will be “so strong that nobody’s going to mess with us.”

(h/t Business Insider)

Reality

Get ready for yet another Republican-led war in the Middle East should we elect a President Donald Trump.

It is scary to have a presidential candidate hold a policy of American military aggression, reinstating torture techniques that are proven not to work, while calling for a military buildup, ignoring international laws, and replacing career generals who he disagrees with puts our country on a highly volatile and dangerous path.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoCn8pExF70

Ivanka Trump Lies About Trump Organization’s Paid Parental Leave

In an apparent contradiction to what Ivanka Trump said on “Good Morning America” yesterday, the Trump Organization has suggested that not all of its employees are eligible to receive eight weeks of paid maternity and adoption leave.

Deirdre Rosen, the senior vice president of human resources for the Trump Organization, told ABC News that the Trump Organization does offer a an eight-week paid parental leave policy, but said that may not be the case at the various properties that comprise GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s sprawling empire.

“The Trump Organization is proud of the family friendly environment it fosters throughout its portfolio. The Trump Organization, along with the lifestyle brand, Ivanka Trump, a company separate from the Trump Organization, wholly owned by Ivanka Trump, both offer an industry leading eight-week paid parental leave policy,” Rosen said in a statement. “The policies and practices allowing employees to enjoy a healthy work-life balance vary from property to property. We take an individualized approach to helping employees manage family and work responsibilities.”

During an interview Wednesday on “Good Morning America,” Ivanka Trump told ABC News anchor Amy Robach that all of Trump’s employees are offered paid maternity leave and adoption leave.

Robach asked if the benefit is applicable to all Trump Organization workers. Ivanka Trump responded: “It is and also adoption leave.”

The Trump Organization declined to release copies of its employee handbooks to ABC News, saying “the organization is a private business and will not be providing their handbooks which are considered proprietary.”

ABC News has asked the company to provide the sections in the employee handbook outlining the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s family leave policies. The company has not yet responded to that request.

The Trump Organization also declined to elaborate on which employees are eligible for the eight-week paid parental leave.

The Trump campaign told ABC News this afternoon that the statement from Trump’s company “needs no further comment.”

Here is the full exchange between Robach and Ivanka Trump:

ROBACH: You’re an executive vice president at the Trump Organization. You said last night that the Trump Organization headed by your father does offer paid maternity leave for its employees. Is that for all of the thousands of employees of your father?

IVANKA TRUMP: It is and also adoption leave. So it’s a great thing and at my own business since inception I’ve offered eight weeks paid leave, only 10 percent of American companies offer that benefit, so it is quite unique and this policy is to encourage more companies and to encourage all Americans to be able to get the benefit of it should they be new mothers because it’s so critical and important.

(h/t ABC News)

Reality

If it does offer parental leave, that’s news to employees at many of the Trump Organization’s hotels.

The Huffington Post on Wednesday morning checked the validity of Ivanka Trump’s comments to ABC. Employees at the Trump SoHo, New York and Miami hotels, as well as the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, all said that they do not offer workers paid maternity leave. Instead, they said that the company complied with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal law that requires companies to give employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off for the adoption or birth of a child.

An undated employee handbook for the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, obtained by HuffPost, states that workers there are entitled to unpaid family leave, in accordance with the FMLA. The manual notes that employees must “substitute their earned and unused vacation days and personal days for any otherwise unpaid FMLA leave.” That is, if employees want paid maternity or paternity leave, they have to use other paid time off that they’ve banked.

Media

Good Morning America via Yahoo News

Trump Campaign Manager Calls For More Privacy From Trump But Less Transparency From Clinton

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway downplayed the need for “extensive medical reporting” on Donald Trump while accusing Hillary Clinton of a lack of transparency about her health conditions.

Speaking to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday, Conway said that she did not know what information Trump would disclose about his health when he appears on The Dr. Oz Show on Wednesday.

“I don’t know why we need such extensive medical reporting when we all have a right to privacy,” the campaign manager opined.

Mitchell pointed out that there was a tradition of candidates releasing medical records, which Trump had refused to honor.

“The American people have a right to know what the health is of their perspective commander-in-chief,” Mitchell insisted.
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“I agree with your premise,” Conway replied. “And so the question remains, why in the world did Hillary Clinton lie to everyone and conceal such an important fact for two days [after being diagnosed with pneumonia], saying she was overheated and dehydrated and then, of course, hours and hours later after, unfortunately, her health had become the biggest trending story of the day, not the 9/11 fallen.”

“The question remains that if this is about transparency and medical records and health conditions then why was she so furtive in the business of concealment here?”

(h/t Raw Story)

Reality

In logic this is known as a double-standard. Unfairly applying a rule in different ways to different people.

Media

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