Donald Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani on Sunday claimed that “anything’s legal” during war, including the theft of private property.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Giuliani said that the United States should have seized oil fields in Iraq following the 2003 invasion, to prevent the resource from falling into the hands of terrorists.
It is a position that Trump has argued for years, but it has only garnered serious attention since the former reality TV star became the Republican nominee for president.
Asked why such a move would not amount to theft, Giuliani scoffed. “Of course it’s legal,” he said. “It’s a war. Until the war is over, anything’s legal.”
This is patently false. The seizure of private property in war has been prohibited under international law for more than a century.
That Giuliani, a lawyer and former U.S. attorney, would dismiss decades of international law was unexpected, but it was in keeping with Giuliani’s recent adoption of many of Trump’s most unsubstantiated claims.
The tenor and tone of Giuliani’s media appearances on behalf of Trump have caused a number of his former colleagues to worry publicly that the former mayor of New York is throwing away his legacy.
Giuliani went on to claim that Trump never meant that the United States should have literally removed Iraq’s chief natural resource from the country, only that American troops should have remained in Iraq to ensure it was divided up evenly. “Leave a force back there and take [the oil] and make sure it’s distributed in a proper way,” he told Stephanopoulos.
“If that oil wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have the Islamic State,” Giuliani continued. “That oil is what makes the Islamic State so rich. Had we held that oil, made sure that it was equitably distributed within Iraq, we [could] have some say, some control over the distribution of it.”
For Trump, however, the notion of taking Iraq’s oil has always held an appeal as a sort of plunder. Speaking to Stephanopoulos in 2011, Trump explained: “In the old days, you know when you had a war, to the victor belong the spoils. You go in. You win the war and you take it. … You’re not stealing anything. … We’re taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.”
On the presidential campaign trail, Trump has moderated his statements, leaving out the part about Iraq reimbursing the United States for the cost of our blundered invasion of their country.
In addition, the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War provides that “any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”
For example, when Saddam Hussein (the former authoritarian leader of Iraq who Trump admires) invaded Kuwait in 1990, one of the justifications for international intervention was because Hussein seized and held Kuwaiti oil fields.
A white nationalist symbol has made its way into the latest back and forth in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Amid the flurry of statements about Hillary Clinton calling “half” of Donald Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables,” — a reference to some of the Republican nominee’s supporters who ascribe to views popular among the white nationalist-linked alt-right movement — informal Trump adviser and confidante Roger Stone tweeted a picture of the poster from the movie “The Expendables” altered as “The Deplorables.” Donald Trump, Jr., one of Trump’s sons, posted the same image on Instagram. The origin of the image is unclear.
The Photoshopped faces in the picture include Trump, running mate Gov. Mike Pence, Gov. Chris Christie, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Dr. Ben Carson, both of Trump’s eldest sons, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, alt-right icon Milo Yiannopoulos, and Stone himself.
Prominently featured over Trump’s right shoulder: popular white nationalist symbol, Pepe the Frog.
“Pepe the Frog is a huge favorite white supremacist meme,” Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center told NBC News of the meme.
While Pepe the Frog may not be a household name, the meme is known to members of the alt-right on the internet.
“It’s constantly used in those circles,” Beirich said. “The white nationalists are gonna love this because they’re gonna feel like ‘yeah we’re in there with Trump, there’s Pepe the Frog.'”
Pepe the Frog, a cartoon amphibian, was popularized on the website 4chan, and became associated with the neo-Nazi movement.
The Trump campaign has been repeatedly accused of dog whistles to white supremacists and the alt-right, though his original position on support from these groups was ambiguous. When confronted with the support of prominent white nationalist and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke in February, Trump stumbled in his initial disavowal of the man — telling CNN at the time, “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.”
He later clarified that he disavowed Duke’s support, though the former Klansman — now running for Congress in Louisiana — has continued to tweet messages of support for the Republican nominee.
Over the course of this campaign, Trump has retweeted Twitter accounts with names such as ‘WhiteNationalistTM’ and blasted out anti-Semitic images to his over 11 million followers on the social media site. Some members of his campaign have been tied to the alt-right, including Breitbart’s Steve Bannon, who is now CEO of the Trump campaign. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton gave a speech shortly after Bannon’s appointment linking Trump’s campaign to the nationalistic movement and calling on the rest of the GOP to reject extremist views. Clinton has continued to argue that Trump has “given voice” those who engage in “offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.”
Stone, for his part, is known for his controversial tweets that usually defend Trump, warn of a rigged election, and lashing out at Clinton. For months he has repeatedly advertised “Clinton Rape” t-shirts on his account and pushed hard on the Trump-proposed narrative that the election could be rigged against the Republican nominee.
Stone is no longer with the campaign in an official capacity, after parting ways with Trump in August of last year. Despite that, he remains a self-described “FOT: Friend of Trump” who was most recently invited to attend the campaign’s event announcing Gov. Mike Pence as Trump’s running mate.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks tells NBC News that “Don Jr., like Mr. Trump, disavows any groups or symbols associated with a message of hate.”
Stone could not be reached for comment on this article or the image’s origination. In his tweet, Stone said that he was “proud” to be among “The Deplorables” in the image, while Trump, Jr. wrote that he was “honored to be grouped with the hard working men and women of this great nation that have supported” his father.
Tweeting white supremacist and neo-Nazi imagery once could be considered an accident, multiple times shows an unmistakable pattern that can’t be explained away.
On July 4th, 2015, Trump tweeted that Jeb Bush likes “Mexican illegals because of his wife.”
On August 28th, 2015, Trump tweeted an attack on Jeb Bush how he should stop “speaking Mexican.”
On November 4th, 2015, Trump tweeted a meme tying Jeb Bush to the Nazis that used racist imagery.
On November 22nd, 2015, Trump tweeted a graphic with fake statistics that incorrectly inflated African-American murderers in the United States.
On January 22nd, Trump retweeted a tweet from the white supremacist WhiteGenocideTM.
On February 10nd, Trump AGAIN retweeted a tweet from WhiteGenocideTM, after being blasted a few weeks prior.
On July 4th, the Trump campaign tweeted anti-Semitic imagery of rival Hillary Clinton with a star of David on a backdrop of money. Trump tried to explain the controversy away that it was a “sheriff star” but journalist uncovered the Trump campaign never created that image because it was originally posted on a neo-Nazi website.
On July 5th, Donald Trump Jr. liked a tweet by one of the worst and most active member of the “alt-right” neo-Nazi movement on Twitter.
On July 6th, Trump attempted to defend his “Star of David” tweet by retweeting a meme from a known white supremacist.
On July 20th, an elected Trump delegate known for months to be a white supremacist has had her credentials stripped by the Republican party after posting a racial slur to Facebook and making “threats of violence” against black people.
On July 25th, Trump’s foreign policy advisor Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn retweeted an anti-semitic post.
On August, 29th, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a post from known white supremacist Kevin MacDonald.
Donald Trump eulogized conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly Saturday, praising her as an underdog and linking the anti-feminist movement she led to his anti-establishment campaign.
“She loved her country, she loved her family and she loved her god,” Trump said at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. “The legacy will live on every time some underdog outmatches and outguns, defies the odds and delivers a win for the people.”
“America has always been about the underdog and always been about defying the odds,” he added.
Schlafly died Monday at 92. An early supporter of the Religious Right, she was most well-known for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and becoming one of the leading female critics of the feminist movement.
Trump praised Schlafly for being “America First,” a phrase he’s used to articulate his international policies on trade, immigration and other global affairs.
“And in all her battles, she never strayed from the one guiding principle: she was for America and was always ‘America First,'” he said. “People have forgotten that nowadays. With Phyllis, it was America First.”
Trump — who famously never apologizes, at least not publicly — also said Schlafly was someone who “never apologized.”
“She never wavered, never apologized and never backed down in taking on the kingmakers. She never stopped fighting for the fundamental idea that the American people ought to have their needs come before anything or anyone else,” he said.
Trump said Schlafly believed in the power of everyday American to challenge “the rigged system” he said.
“The idea that so called little people or the little person that she loved so much could beat the system often times the rigged system, you’ve been hearing a lot about it,” he added.
“That the American grassroots is more powerful than all of the world’s special interests put together. And that’s the way Phyllis felt.”
In her latest book — “The Conservative Case for Trump” — released Tuesday, Schlafly argued that conservative Christians should follow high-profile evangelical leaders such as Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in supporting Trump’s candidacy.
“Trump has gone to great lengths to court national leaders in the social-conservative movement and has convinced many of the most prominent ones that he genuinely supports their policy positions,” she and co-authors Ed Martin and Brett M. Decker wrote.
Reality
Many of us were not alive or politically aware in the 1970’s and at the height of Schlafly’s prominence, so when the media described her as simply “ant-feminist activist” they didn’t paint a full enough picture.
Phyllis Schlafly was indeed an activist who was more than against feminism, she did everything in her power to make sure that every woman would be back in the kitchen under complete and total subservience to their husband. Her claim to fame was her fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional amendment to forbid sexism by U.S. federal and state governments.
“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.”
When the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for minors, she lead the movement for the impeachment of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was the deciding vote in the case.
This is who Donald Trump calls a “hero.”
But she’s not a racist!
Here is Phyllis Schlafly in her own words bemoaning that today’s immigrants aren’t white enough to her liking.
Here is Schlafly on record claiming Hispanics are not like the GOP, because of illegitimate pregnancies and an inability to understand the Bill of Rights.
Here is Phyllis Schlafly in an interview saying that Obama is intentionally bringing in ebola to make the U.S. more like Africa.
Here is a column written by Schlafly upset that disaster relief resources, things that save lives, are printed in non-English languages. Again these pamphlets save lives of actual real Americans who do not speak English.
You were saying?
Bonus
For an extra laugh, head over to Conservapedia, created by Phyllis Schlafly’s son Andrew, a conservative alternative to Wikipedia, who he found to be too factual and didn’t contain enough bias. Needless to say it is an embarrassment and highly unreliable.
Donald Trump gave an interview Thursday that aired on a television station funded by the Kremlin, arguing that the Russian government was “probably” not meddling in the American presidential race.
Speaking to Larry King on RT America, which is an arm of government-funded news outlet Russia Today, Trump said it would “not be appropriate” if Russian forces were looking to influence the race, which is suspected by some investigators and has been fanned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign as recently as Thursday morning.
He also suggested that the allegation was politically motivated.
“I think it’s probably unlikely. Maybe the Democrats are putting that out — who knows,” Trump told King. “If they are doing something, I hope that somebody’s going to be able to find out so they can end it. Because that would not be appropriate at all.”
Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, told CNN the interview was recorded as a podcast and was a favor to King, adding, “Mr. Trump was never told it would be shared anywhere else.” Miller later said Trump wouldn’t have agreed to do the interview had he known it would be aired on RT.
The interview was striking given that Trump spent Thursday on the defensive over some of his laudatory comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin. Clinton attacked Trump for praising Putin on Wednesday evening at the “Commander in Chief Forum” as a stronger leader than President Barack Obama, and her campaign has for weeks pointed out the alleged ties between Trump’s associates and Russian interests.
Yet the Republican nominee’s operation on Thursday indicated no discomfort with the mounting criticism, with Trump running mate Mike Pence echoing the distinction made between Putin and Obama. And the appearance on Russian television suggested no hesitation from Trump to dive into the controversy.
Putin has called the hack of Democratic officials’ email accounts a “public service” but has denied Russian involvement. Asked by King if he agreed with Putin’s assessment, Trump declined to pass judgment.
“I don’t know who hacked. You tell me: Who hacked?” Trump said, claiming he had not heard Putin’s statement. “I have absolutely no opinion on that.”
Asked during the RT America interview what has surprised him most about the political process, Trump unloaded on the American press.
“Well, I think the dishonesty of the media. The media has been unbelievably dishonest,” Trump responded. “I mean they’ll take a statement that you make which is perfect and they’ll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it.”
“And all of a sudden it doesn’t look as good as it did when you actually said it. But there’s tremendous dishonesty with the media. Not all of it, obviously, but tremendous dishonesty,” he said.
Trump also weighed in on domestic politics, declining to criticize Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson for a gaffe he made earlier on Thursday and saying unequivocally that Johnson should not be in the general election debate later this month. Johnson would need to earn 15% support in polls to make the stage, an effort seemingly hampered when he failed to identify the war-torn city of Aleppo, Syria, in a live television interview.
“He’s not too much of a factor,” Trump said. “I’d rather it be Hillary and myself, because we’re the only two with a chance of winning.”
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, defended Trump’s appearance to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day” on Friday, saying that Trump wasn’t criticizing the US to say the Iraq War was a failure.
“If you think that Donald Trump is the only person in this country that thinks we’ve had a feckless, anemic foreign policy in the last eight years, then that’s just not true,” Conway said.
She also clarified Trump’s comments on Putin the day before, in which Trump called Putin a stronger leader than Obama in his country.
“In the full clip he said, ‘That’s not the system I agree with, but he’s a strong leader there,'” Conway said. “I mean, nobody wants to play the full clip.”
King’s show, PoliticKing, is produced by Ora TV, which was founded by King and Mexican media magnate Carlos Slim in 2012. In June 2015, Ora announced it was dropping plans to work on a television project with Trump following his controversial remarks about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
As Mediate points out, Trump likely didn’t think too much beyond just doing an interview with his longtime friend Larry King. And the Trump campaign spokeswoman said that they thought Larry King interview was going to be on King’s podcast, not Russia Today.
What would be worse, though? A U.S. presidential candidate agreeing to do an interview on Russia Today, or doing one by accident?
Donald Trump on Thursday defended his statement that he was publicly opposed to the Iraq war before it started — despite evidence contradicting that claim.
The GOP nominee also said he would have voted against the Iraq war had he been in Congress at the time of the 2003 invasion, a new line in Trump’s attempt to make the war a signature focus of the presidential campaign.
“Had I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a vote in opposition,” Trump said before framing the war as a referendum on Hillary Clinton’s judgment.
Trump, at a charter school here to deliver a speech about education, brought up interviews in 2003 and 2004 in which he slowly changed his stance on the war. The invasion began on March 20, 2003.
In Sept. 11, 2002 in an interview on the Howard Stern show, Trump was asked if he supported an invasion of Iraq and responded: “Yeah, I guess so,” and “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” The interview was earlier reported by Buzzfeed News, which posted audio of the exchange.
“I opposed going in, and I did oppose it. Despite the media saying, ‘no, yes, no,’ I opposed going in,” Trump said Thursday. “I was opposed to the war from the beginning, long after my interview with Howard Stern,” Trump said.
The Republican nominee has been criticized for seeming revisionist history on his position on the Iraq war, which Trump has used to attack Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize the war when she was a U.S. senator.
Esquire, the magazine that published a 2004 interview in which Trump opposed the war a year after it began, earlier this month accused the GOP nominee of “lying” about claims he was always against the war.
Clinton at an NBC Commander-in-Chief forum Wednesday said the decision to to war in Iraq, and her vote to authorize military action, was a mistake. Trump called the Iraq issue “one of the biggest differences in this race.”
“Here’s the bottom line. I was a private citizen,” Trump said. “I had no access to briefings or great intelligence survey that she did … But I didn’t have access to all of the intelligence information that she did and everybody else did.”
Though it wasn’t necessarily long after the September 2002 Howard Stern interview, Trump did begin shifting his stance in early 2003. But it’s not clear that he was strongly against the war before it happened.
Trump on Thursday brought up a January 2003 interview with Fox’s Neil Cavuto, before the war began, in which he said that maybe President George W. Bush should be more focused on the U.S. economy.
“Well, he has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps shouldn’t be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, you know,” Trump said, according to the website PolitiFact. “He’s under a lot of pressure. I think he’s doing a very good job. But, of course, if you look at the polls, a lot of people are getting a little tired. I think the Iraqi situation is a problem. And I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned.”
Trump then cited an interview with the Washington Post from March 25, 2003 — days after the war began — in which he called the situation “a mess.”
However, in an interview four days earlier, again with Cavuto, Trump expressed optimism on the economy in the aftermath of the war and said the invasion “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint, and I think this is really nothing compared to what you’re going to see after the war is over.”
When asked to clarify what he meant, he told Cavuto “I think Wall Street’s just going to go up like a rocket, even beyond.”
Asked if he stood by those 2003 comments calling the invasion a “tremendous success,” Trump told reporters at his Thursday event, “You know what that meant,” before walking away.
When asked what that meant, Trump did not turn around to clarify.
At issue in his claim that he would have voted “no” on the war if he were in Congress is the fact that Trump did not express a negative opinion of the war until 2003. The vote to authorize the Iraq War was held months earlier, in October 2002.
This is the first time Trump has gone to such lengths to prove his claim, despite being asked at earlier points in his candidacy to provide proof of his stances prior to the war.
As he has on multiple earlier occasions, Trump cited a 2004 interview with Esquire, in which he gave his most forceful critique of the war in Iraq.
Trump read a quote from that article Thursday, saying, “Absolute quote: ‘Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in.’ This is right after the war started.”
In the 2004 article, Trump also expressed his doubts that Iraq would become a democracy and said: “Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over.”
Esquire has since added an editor’s note to the online version of the article disputing any link between the piece and Trump’s claim of opposing the war in Iraq before it started.
“Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed to have been against the Iraq War from the beginning, and he has cited this story as proof,” the editor’s note reads. “The Iraq War began in March 2003, more than a year before this story ran, thus nullifying Trump’s timeline.”
And the magazine on Aug. 15 published an accompanying article titled “Once Again, Trump Claims He Was Always Against the Iraq War. He’s Lying.” — with an line below reading “And now he’s throwing Esquire into the mix.”
When we lay out the timeline of events, we can see that Trump is indeed lying when he said he was always against the Iraq War.
September 11, 2002: In an interview on the Howard Stern show, Trump was asked if he supported an invasion of Iraq and responded: “Yeah, I guess so,” and “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”
January 28, 2003: In an interview with Fox’s Neil Cavuto, Trump said that maybe President George W. Bush should be more focused on the U.S. economy, the media should not be tipping our hat, but did not comment on his support.
March 25, 2003: In an interview with the Washington Post trump Trump called the situation “a mess.” This is the very first time Donald Trump publicly disagreed with the Iraq War.
August, 2004: In an interview with Esquire trump said, “Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in.” This is the point that Donald Trump points to as evidence he was always against the Iraq War from the beginning. From his previous statements of support and this article being 1 year and 4 months after the war began, we can see Trump is not being factual.
Of all the lies Donald Trump likes to tell while running for president, the one about being an early opponent of the 2003 Iraq War may be his favorite. Despite well-documented evidence that the casino mogul spoke in support of the ill-fated war in the lead-up to the invasion, reporters have repeatedly let the Republican presidential candidate tell a revisionist version of his past stance without pushing back on the claim.
That sequence repeated itself on Wednesday night during NBC’s televised town hall, the first event featuring the two presidential candidates in back-to-back question-and-answer sessions. When it was Trump’s turn, NBC’s Matt Lauer asked the Republican candidate what about his past experiences has prepared him to be the country’s commander in chief.
Trump followed a familiar routine of dodging the question, offering vague assurances of his success, and eventually, outright lying.
“Well, I think the main thing is, I have great judgment. I have good judgment. I know what’s going on. I’ve called so many of the shots. And I happened to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq ― from ― you can look at Esquire magazine from ‘04, you can look at before that. I was against the war in Iraq because I said it would totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It has absolutely been a disastrous war.”
Lauer, who is surely aware of the factual inaccuracy of Trump’s claim, could have pointed out that 2004 was after the invasion, and therefore more of an example of Monday-morning quarterbacking than good judgment. He could have pointed to earlier interviews in which Trump voiced support for the war. Or he could have asked the candidate for another example from before the 2003 start of the war.
Instead, he just moved on to the next question.
Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski was the first to uncover Trump’s earlier remarks about the war in Iraq. In 2000, Trump called for a “principled and tough” policy toward “outlaw” states like Iraq, Buzzfeed found. In 2002, Howard Stern asked Trump outright if he favored invading Iraq. “Yeah, I guess so,” Trump said at the time. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”
By 2004 it had become clear that ousting Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein was only the first part of a protracted U.S. military effort there, and Trump was offering a new view on the invasion. In August 2004 he told Esquire’s Cal Fussman:
“Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county? C’mon. Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he’ll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn’t have.”
Lauer is not the first reporter to let Trump get away with his revisionist account of his early stance on the Iraq War. Buzzfeed later reported that several major news outlets ― CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Washington Post ― have, on at least one occasion, offered a platform for Trump to insist he was always against the Iraq War without correcting the candidate.
This is no small oversight. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to secure the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2008, in part, because she voted for the disastrous war that her opponent, Barack Obama, had opposed as a senator.
In this election, voters don’t have the option of electing a candidate who demonstrated better judgment about whether to invade Iraq. But during the town hall on Wednesday, Clinton owned up to her miscalculation on the Iraq War ― and reminded voters of her opponent’s refusal to do so.
“I have taken responsibility for my decision,” Clinton said. “He refuses to take responsibility for his support ― that is a judgment issue.”
In Sept. 11, 2002 in an interview on the Howard Stern show, Trump was asked if he supported an invasion of Iraq and responded: “Yeah, I guess so,” and “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” The interview was earlier reported by Buzzfeed News, which posted audio of the exchange.
Esquire, the magazine that published a 2004 interview in which Trump opposed the war a year after it began, earlier this month accused the GOP nominee of “lying” about claims he was always against the war.
“Well, it is, it is a correct tweet,” Trump said when asked about the tweet during NBC News’ Commander-in-Chief Forum in New York on Wednesday night. “There are many people that think that that’s absolutely correct … Well, well, it’s happening, right? And, by the way, since then, it’s gotten worse.”
26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?
NBC’s Matt Lauer, who led the forum, pushed Trump to better explain himself and asked if the Republican nominee thinks that the only way to end sexual assault in the military is to kick women out. (Sexual assault in the military is not just a problem for women, as that Pentagon has said that many assault cases involve men attacking other men.)
“No, not to take them out, but something has to be happen[ing],” Trump said. “Right now part of the problem is nobody gets prosecuted. You have reported — and the gentleman can tell you — you have the report of rape, and nobody gets prosecuted. There are no consequence[s]. When you have somebody that does something so evil, so bad as that, there has to be consequence[s] for that person. You have to go after that person. Right now, nobody’s doing anything. Look at the small number of results. I mean, that’s part of the problem.”
First, from Trump’s statements he was clearly under the impression that we are dealing with only men raping women, and may believe the rape myths that men cannot be raped, and that women cannot be perpetrators.
Donald Trump’s answer never addressed the blatantly sexist overtones of his tweet, and instead called for more prosecutions. However this response also calls into question Trump’s understanding of a very nuanced issue.
According to Human Rights Watch, military personnel who report a sexual assault frequently find that their military career is the biggest casualty. This gives most victims of sexual assault no incentive or protections to come forward or with any recourse once they’ve been booted out of the armed forces.
Trump, however, has said women should be in the military because, “they’re really into it.”
Donald Trump defended his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin at a forum on Wednesday focused on national security issues, even suggesting that Putin is more worthy of his praise than President Obama.
“Certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader,” Trump said. “We have a divided country.”
The Republican presidential nominee said that an alliance with Russia would help defeat the Islamic State, and when asked to defend some of Putin’s aggressions on the world stage, he asked, “Do you want me to start naming some of the things Obama does at the same time?”
Trump also said he appreciated some of the kind words Putin has had for him. “Well, I think when he calls me brilliant, I think I’ll take the compliment, okay?”
Donald Trump has engaged in an unsettling bromance with the Russian president, once saying Putin was was world leader he would “get along very well with,” and has since made a lot of pro-Russian stances.
Fought like mad during the Republican National Convention to change the GOP platform to no longer provide arms to Ukraine in their conflict with Russia.
Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, left over revelations that he possibly received millions of dollars in illegal payments from Ukraine’s former pro-Russian ruling party.
Incorrectly stated that Russia would never go into Ukraine, when they have been intervening there for the past 3 years.
Pat Buchanan probably started the conservative love-fest when pointed out Putin’s policies matched up with paleoconservative ideology and declared him, “one of us.”
During last night’s Commander-in-Chief forum, Donald Trump made it sound as though the intelligence officials who have been briefing him haven’t hid their disdain for President Obama.
Asked by NBC’s Matt Lauer whether anything he learned during his first two briefings shocked him, Trump said “Yes, there was one thing that shocked me.”
“What I did learn is that our leadership — Barack Obama — did not follow what our experts… said to do,” Trump said. “I was very, very surprised in almost every instance. And I could tell — I am pretty good with the body language — I could tell they were not happy our leaders did not follow what they were recommending.”
Three people who have worked in the intelligence community told ThinkProgress Trump’s comments are both unusual and implausible.
Paul Pillar, a former high-ranking CIA analyst who worked for 28 years in the intelligence community, said he “can’t remember any time where a candidate has said anything about” an intelligence briefing publicly.
“The proper, standard thing for any candidate to do would be to say nothing about it — to at most acknowledge a briefing happened,” he added. “It’s quite out of order to start talking about body language.”
Pillar views Trump’s remarks as crossing a line.
“This is a courtesy provided by the intelligence community to the candidate to help keep them as smart as possible on things the agencies are following, and to turn it around and try and take electoral advantage of it by reading something into it, like [officials] not liking what the current administration is doing, is simply not in order,” he said, adding he’d “be very, very surprised any intelligence analyst would indicate anything about pleasure or displeasure with current policies.”
Pillar’s sentiment was seconded by Bruce Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Institute Intelligence Project.
“I don’t know of any precedent,” Riedel wrote in an email. “It’s also questionable that intelligence briefers would criticize policy decisions even by body language.”
Alan Makovsky, senior national security fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former senior staff member on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, characterized Trump’s remarks as “astonishing.” (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent part of CAP.)
“Speaking as a former member of the [intelligence] community, I think it would put a cloud over the careers of the briefers if people took Trump’s comments seriously,” he said. “If the body language stuff was believed by their superiors, it’d be the last briefing they ever got.”
During a press conference today, Hillary Clinton characterized Trump’s comments as “totally inappropriate and undisciplined,” adding she’d “never comment on any aspect of an intelligence briefing that I received.”
The Washington Post reports that during his first briefing on August 17, Trump was accompanied by Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) and retired U.S. Army Gen. Michael Flynn.
“Trump and Christie listened politely but Flynn repeatedly interrupted the briefers and disparaged their work, according to former officials familiar with the matter,” the Post reports.
(h/t ThinkProgress)
Reality
Retired Col. Steve Ganyard told ABC News the intelligence community was ‘quite upset‘ over Donald Trump’s comments and he “crossed a line.”
Trump placed officers in a terrible situation. Active military is forbidden against wading into political matters, so it would be impossible for the briefers to defend themselves. These people spend years training their bodies to not betray their thoughts. If the body language stuff was believed by their superiors, it’d be the last briefing they ever got.
Media
VIDEO: Trump says he could tell his classified intel briefers aren't happy with Obama because of their body language https://t.co/vBEAPKJk7d
Many of Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., policy staffers quit working for the campaign after not being paid or publicly recognized, according to a new report in The Washington Post.
According to former employees, they were told they would be paid when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager. But Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski in July, said the staffers would remain unpaid.
“It’s a complete disaster,” a campaign adviser told the Post. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”
Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said that the D.C. policy shop has been “very successful” but added that “no such oral agreements were made” in respect to paying the staffers.
The two leaders of the policy shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, allegedly promised the workers that the money was coming. The report notes, however, that Dearborn failed to get an approved budget for the D.C. branch after Manafort was appointed.
“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” another staffer told the newspaper.
“There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”
There were also workers who did not hold the policy shop’s leaders responsible.
“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said the former policy coordinator.
“I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”
The list of staffers who left the D.C. policy shop includes Ying Ma, a former staffer to Trump adviser Ben Carson; Tera Dahl, a former assistant to ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); J.D. Gordon, the shop’s director of national security; and conservative writer William Triplett, among others.
The staffers who remained in the Washington office are now working on a volunteer basis, the report added.
