Trump Flip-Flops on Elements of His Tax Plan

Presidential candidate Donald Trump today backed away a bit from his tax plan, describing it as open to negotiation.

Pressed by CNBC as to how he could simultaneously brand himself as a populist who will take on wealthy elites while proposing sweeping tax cuts for billionaires, Trump backed away from his plan.

I am not necessarily a huge fan of that. I am so much more into the middle class who have just been absolutely forgotten in our country.

Trump described his tax proposal, which was the most detailed policy paper he put out in the campaign, as merely a starting point for a future deal.

You know, when you put out a tax plan, you are going to start negotiating. You don’t say, ‘OK, this is our tax plan, lots of luck, folks.’ There will be negotiation back and forth. And I can see that going up, to be honest with you.

The Trump tax plan has attracted criticism in two main areas: first, in that it loses too much revenue, and second, in that it primarily benefits high-income taxpayers. Both are shown in the Tax Foundation analysis published last year. A third criticism, albeit a more subtle one, is that Trump’s plan reduces rates without doing much to improve tax bases, and therefore generates less growth than it could otherwise, as Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge has argued.

If Trump moderates some of the elements of his tax plan, he may want to consider getting rid of the preferential rate for pass through income, which benefits wealthier Americans and encourages relabeling, and also reducing the size of the zero bracket in his plan, which is about four times larger than the current standard deduction, and contributes substantially to the plan’s $10 trillion revenue loss.

(h/t Tax Foundation)

Reality

A politician changing their mind toward a better idea can be a good thing as it shows progress. But when a politician changes their mind, not organically, but timed as a means to maximize their popularity, this is called a flip-flop.

In our review of Donald Trump’s tax reform plan would reduce federal revenues by $9.5 trillion dollars over 10 years causing massive cuts from the military to Social Security. Any change here would be progress.

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Stop The Donald Trump’s Tax Reform Analysis

Trump Flip-Flops on Raising the Minimum Wage

In a reversal, Donald Trump expressed openness to raising the federal minimum wage during an interview on Wednesday.

“I’m looking at that, I’m very different from most Republicans,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee told CNN Wednesday about the prospect of increasing wages.

You have to have something you can live on. But what I ‘m really looking to do is get people great jobs so they make much more money than that, much more money than the $15.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25, but labor groups have been pushing for it to be raised to $15.

During a November debate, Trump voiced opposition to raising the minimum wage.

“I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is,” he said during the debate.

During a November appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump said the current minimum wage is too high and was slowing job growth.

“We have to become competitive with the world. Our taxes are too high, our wages are too high, everything is too high,” he said. “What’s going to happen is now people are going to start firing people.”

On Wednesday, Trump did caution that lawmakers would have to be careful not to raise the minimum too much.

“If you start playing around too much with that lower level number, you are not going to be competitive,” he said, before reiterating that he’s “open to doing something” with the federal minimum wage.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton backs a $12 minimum wage and has supported local attempts to push for $15 per hour; her rival, Bernie Sanders, supports a $15 federal minimum wage.

Republicans at large are against raising that number. Rick Santorum is the only GOP presidential candidate who backed raising the minimum wage. Ben Carson briefly signaled openness before walking that back.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Just a few months ago Trump said he would lower the minimum wage during a Republican debate:

Taxes too high, wages too high.

And again on Fox News he doubled-down:

Whether it’s taxes or wages, if they’re too high we’re not going to be able to compete with other countries.

And then he told auto workers right to their faces that they make too much money.

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Artist Who Drew Donald Trump With Small Penis Claims She Was Assaulted By Trump Fan

The Los Angeles artist who painted a viral portrait of a nude Donald Trump says someone gave her the typical Trump supporter treatment: Punching her in the face.

Illma Gore posted two photos of her bruised face on Instagram Monday, and said an apparent Trump-loving stranger attacked her several days ago.

“Today I was punched in the face by a man who got out of his car and yelled, ‘Trump 2016!’ in Los Angeles, just days after I returned home from London just down the road from my house,” Gore wrote.

“I am sad that this is the state of our America right now. I am sad that Trump, and many of his supporters, don’t find words enough to express their opinions – they need walls, waterboarding and punches.”

She tagged Donald Trump and urged him: “Make America Decent Again!”

Gore filed a police report, which she sent to the Daily News. The report says the attacker fled in a car right after the punch, and that Gore was not seriously injured. Gore told the News the aggressor was with “a group of guys in the car.”

The LAPD did not immediately comment on her case.

Reality

The artist Illma Gore received death threats and fled the country for a time. Shortly upon returning she was assaulted by an alleged Trump supporter.

Donald Trump has previously condoned violence against those who disagree with him.

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Trump Accuses Cruz’s Father of Helping JFK’s Assassin

Donald Trump alleged that Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president. Trump claimed that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.

His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it. But I think it’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible.

As the anchor mentioned the photo that allegedly included Cruz, Trump continued:

I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Donald Trump’s source is the pro-Trump supermarket tabloid newspaper The National Enquirer. That’s right… this paper:

National Enquirer, "Ted Cruz Father Linked to JFK Assassination!"

The Miami Herald debunked this claim rather well:

Gus Russo, an author and journalist who has written extensively about the JFK assassination and Oswald, is dubious. Russo told [the reporter] in an interview that Oswald, who was living in New Orleans in 1963, was not connected to the Cuban community there and would not have had a Cuban supporter helping him. “He was the ultimate loner,” said Russo. Another man seen in the video handing out leaflets had been hired by Oswald to do so at an unemployment office, according to the Warren Commission. Rafael Cruz also lived in New Orleans, but it was later in the 1960s. As for the photo “evidence,” Russo said, “It’s very subjective. It’s not proof. It’s just an opinion. To charge something this big, you’d better have better proof than that ‘it looks like him.’”

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Trump Says Cruz’s Father Shouldn’t Be ‘Allowed’ To Say Mean Things About Him

Donald Trump hit back hard Tuesday at Ted Cruz’s father after he made an appeal to “every member of the body of Christ” to vote for his son, and not the “wicked” – calling the comments “disgraceful” and “horrible.”

The Examiner reported that Rafael Cruz had been meeting for days with Indiana pastors, many of whom have since endorsed the Texas senator.

Speaking with the head of the American Family Association of Indiana, the elder Cruz had warned of the “wicked electing the wicked” and urged fellow Christians to come out to vote.

I implore, I exhort every member of the body of Christ to vote according to the word of God, and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America. And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.

But Trump unleashed on the Cuban-born Rafael Cruz, a pastor, after he made his religious appeal to Indiana and other voters to support his son in the Republican presidential nominating contest. Indiana is voting Tuesday.

I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to do it. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to say it … You look at so many of the ministers that are backing me, and they’re backing me more so than they’re backing Cruz, and I’m winning the evangelical vote. It’s disgraceful that his father can go out and do that. And just — and so many people are angry about it. And the evangelicals are angry about it, the way he does that. But I think it’s horrible. I think it’s absolutely horrible that a man can go and do that, what he’s saying there.

In a sharp turn, the Republican presidential front-runner then abruptly invoked a tabloid story about Rafael Cruz’s supposed connection to John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

(h/t Fox News)

Reality

Trump has made the statement before that people shouldn’t be “allowed” to say negative things about him and that he would like to limit the freedom for people who disagree with him through litigation.

Also by claiming that Pastor Rafael Cruz shouldn’t preach about supporting a candidate (who happens to be his son) is the definition of a double-standard in the purest sense. Trump has had support from so many pastors who have used their position as a church leader to publicly preach about voting for Donald Trump that a new word was coined, “Trumpvangelicals“. These include Mike Murdock, Paula White, Robert Jeffress, and Joel Osteen, join the list of Kenneth Copeland, and 40 others who met with Trump at Trump Tower in September 2015.

There is also Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, publicly supported Trump, supported his stance on rejecting the Iran deal, and supported Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering America.

At Trump’s Cleveland rally, Pastor Darrell Scott of New Spirit Revival Center Ministries performed a sermon to introduce Trump to the stage. Pastor Scott called Trump humble, blamed “liberal media for brainwashing” you for thinking Trump could possibly be an out-and-out racist, and directed people to vote for Donald Trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCHZbB-M9oE

Jerry Falwell Jr. publicly endorses Donald Trump, compares him to King David, and produced radio advertisements evoking Bible passages:

“Donald Trump lives a life of loving and helping others as Jesus has taught in the great commandment.”

Trump Claims He is Receiving the Most Votes Ever in Republican Primaries

Trump victory speech for Pennsylvania

Donald Trump’s march to the GOP nomination picked up steam last week, with dominant primary victories in the northeast.

After the wins, several news outlets reported that the New York billionaire could break the record for most Republican primary votes in history — if Trump scores big in Indiana, New Jersey and California. Those states have yet to vote.

Trump, apparently not wanting to wait, declared he’s already achieved the voting record.

“In the history of Republican primaries, I’ve gotten the most votes in the history of the Republican party,” Trump said during his speech on Friday, April 29 at the California Republican Party Convention south of San Francisco.

Trump went on to say he’s broken the record without needing to wait for big states like California.

Reality

Donald Trump said he’s already earned the most Republican primary votes in history. However Politifact contacted Eric Ostermeier, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota and founder of the number-crunching blog Smart Politics, has taken a look at the data.

“He is on pace to break the record, but he hasn’t yet,” Ostermeier told PolitiFact California. “I’ve seen no possible configuration of numbers that show he’s already broken it.”

Ostermeier placed Trump’s primary vote total at about 10 million so far. That’s still short of the 10.8 million votes George W. Bush received in the 2000 GOP primaries.

If one counts both primaries and caucuses, Trump would still be short of Bush’s overall tally, the professor said. Bush’s total is considered closer to 12 million if both types of elections are counted, he said.

Ostermeier estimated Trump would likely achieve the primary vote record if he earns a strong win in California’s primary, where he could pick up more than a million additional primary votes. He said Trump’s large vote totals can be attributed to the relatively close match-up he’s had with Cruz late into the primary season.

Several news articles, including by the Washington Post and Politico, used primary vote totals logged by RealClearPolitics.com. Its data show Trump has yet to break the record.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to our request for comment.

Trump Campaign Spokesperson and Former AntiVaxxer Exec Lies About His Vaccine Beliefs

Donald Trump spokeswoman Elizabeth Emken, a former executive with the leading advocacy group Autism Speaks, was put in a difficult position Monday when asked about the frontrunner’s earlier statements linking vaccines and autism.

Asked on CNN about Trump suggesting a scientific link exists between childhood vaccines and autism during a fall 2015 presidential debate, Emken sidestepped a direct rebuke of Trump’s claims.

“The position of Autism Speaks has been for quite awhile that we need to find out what’s happening. We know there’s a genetic component and there’s an environmental trigger and until we get to the bottom of what’s happening, no one knows what causes autism. Anyone that tells you what does or what doesn’t cause autism is simply not basing that on facts.

“We don’t know, we need to keep looking,” Emken continued, saying she hadn’t discussed the issue with the GOP frontrunner. “But the bottom line is, look, vaccines are the most successful health program in the history of the world, so I don’t believe that’s at all what he was saying.”

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Reality

Donald Trump spokeswoman Elizabeth Emken made 2 rather large fibs.

First she claimed that “we don’t know what causes autism,” but just before she made the misleading statement that “we know there is an environmental (vaccine) trigger”.

Second, she is lying about Trump’s stance on vaccines:

A little back story… way back in 1998 there was a Doctor called Andrew Wakefield who published a study in the well-respected medical journal The Lancet that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Funny thing about well-respected scientific journals is, people in your field of study read your paper and try to duplicate the results, this is called peer-review. Nobody could duplicate the results so people became suspicious. Looking harder they found a sub-standard sample size of only 13 subjects, many subjects who already showed signs of autism at the start of the study, discovered data that was fraudulently modified, uncovered plans by Wakefield exploit the new market he created by profiting from his findings, and a discovered conflict of interest. Every single study that has been performed in regards to vaccines and autism continues to find no link between the two. In short Doctor Wakefield is now Mr. Wakefield and can never study medicine again and vaccines remain one of the greatest discoveries of human history.

According to ScienceBlogs, Emken used to be the Executive Director of Autism Speaks, an “autism advocacy” group that used to be very much into anti-vaccine pseudoscience. Indeed, after much foot dragging, it wasn’t until 2015 that Autism Speaks finally grudgingly admitted that there is no good evidence linking vaccines to autism after a large study was published showing no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism and a meta-analysis involving over a million children similarly failed to find a link. It’s not for nothing that Autism Speaks has been quite appropriately accused of speaking up too late on vaccines.

Just like Mr. Trump, you probably have one friend, who is not a doctor or scientist, who has some story that might shed doubt in your mind that vaccines do cause autism. Think about this; That is just one story versus the vast body of evidence in well-performed scientific studies over decades of time, all publicly available to read, and all show absolutely no link. Know anyone with polio? Know anyone who died from smallpox? I’ll bet good money the answer is no. Thank you vaccines. And thank you evidence-based science.

There should be zero surprise that year after year we experience outbreaks of vaccine preventable disease in the areas that have the lowest vaccination rates where many adults and children die. We’re not at all implying that Donald Trump is responsible for these deaths. What we are saying is that when you are a leader and you go around promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, what you are doing is reinforcing someone’s deeply held beliefs and this makes it all the more harder for them to accept new factual information. It is very irresponsible and dangerous on the part of Donald Trump to propagate these false claims.

More info can be found in the links below.

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Here is the journalist who helped shed light on Mr. Wakefield’s skullduggery.

Here is an explanation in pretty comic book form.

The original, now retracted, study in The Lancet.

Here’s a study that looked at half a million subjects with zero link found.

Police Car Smashed During Anti-Trump Protest Outside Rally in Orange County

Cop car smashed by protesters outside of Costa Mesa, CA rally.

A police car was destroyed as rowdy protesters stopped traffic outside a Donald Trump rally in Orange County.

The Republican presidential candidate began his campaign in California on Thursday night, bringing a crowd to The Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa.

Tensions rose as the event drew to a close around 9 p.m. local time, with hundreds of protesters against the brash billionaire demonstrating outside.

There were at least 3,000 people both for and against Trump outside the rally, which had 8,000 attendees, CBS Los Angeles reported.

One group of people even appeared to be trying to turn over a Costa Mesa police car.

A man was seen jumping on top of it and damaging its roof, with the vehicle’s rear window having been shattered.

Juan Silvar, who took video of the event as it unfolded, told the Daily News that crowds came over to the vehicle after they saw a man breaking its windows.

He added that no one was inside the car at the time and that police could only get close to the vehicle after the jumping man, who he did not see getting arrested, had hopped off.

Rows of mounted and police in riot gear were still dispersing remaining crowds at 10 p.m.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department later said on Twitter that the rally had been dispersed by 11 p.m. and that there had been no reports of major injuries.

Costa Mesa Police Department Sgt. Patrick Wessel told the Daily News that 17 people had been arrested for failure to disperse.

He said that two to three other police vehicles had objects thrown through their windows and that another car had its tire punctured.

No arrests had been made for these incidents as of early Friday.

(h/t New York Daily News)

Reality

Violence has no place in our political process and should be condemned from all sides.

Donald Trump says a lot of divisive and hateful statements, escalation of tensions may only seem natural. However as a protester, engaging in violence only plays into the hands of Donald Trump and his supporters. It gives them justification for their false sense of being victimized and allows them to paint the opposition as “thugs” and side-step our real and valid arguments.

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Judges: 4.0, 4.5, 4.0, 3.5, and 2.0 from the Russians.

Trump Makes False Claim of 31,000 Attendees at Costa Mesa

Twitter

During his speech at the Pacific Amphitheater in Orange County, California, Donald Trump made the claim that there was 31,000 in attendance. Trump later tweeted his claim.

(h/t OC Weekly)

Reality

Trump claims there were 31,000 people in attendance, however the Pacific Amphitheater can only hold 8,000. OC Weekly, which has covered events at the Amphitheater for the past 20 years, called his claim, “full of crap“.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6UJnjUoYTA

Trump Supporter Attempts to Run Over Protesters

In a wild scene outside a Donald Trump rally in Orange County, a car began doing donuts around protesters Thursday evening.

Thousands flocked to the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa to see the Republican front-runner speak, but many others stood outside in protest.

Protesters began flooding the streets near the intersection of Fairview Road and Fair Drive toward the conclusion of Trump’s rally.

That’s when a car began spinning out wildly several times, nearly striking a large group of protesters.

Those nearby could be seen jumping out of the way, some appearing to try to hit the car. The car then sped away at a high rate of speed.

(h/t ABC)

Reality

In the YouTube video below, at the 0:39 second mark in the very center of the screen, you can see a sheriff un-holster his sidearm. Drawing a weapon is a “show of force” and is not permitted unless justified. Section 314.7.3 of the California Department of Justice Law Enforcement Policy & Procedures Manual, under the section regarding vehicle pursuits it explains:

The use of firearms to disable a pursued vehicle is not generally an effective tactic and involves all the dangers associated with discharging firearms. Agents should not utilize firearms during an ongoing pursuit unless the conditions and circumstances dictate that such use reasonably appears necessary to protect life. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit any agent from using a firearm to stop a suspect from using a vehicle as a deadly weapon.

That officer was certain enough that the car was a danger to him and everyone around him to draw his weapon. If you have any friends in the police force ask them how simply drawing your weapon means a mass of paperwork, interviews by members of the department about why, and a lot of extra work that they try to avoid unless absolutely necessary. It is not something you should consider a small incident because an officer does not.

Was the driver engaging in reckless driving and putting lives in danger? According to California Vehicle Code 23103, yes.

A person who drives a vehicle upon a highway in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property is guilty of reckless driving.

There are no exceptions for “he did it first” or “I was surrounded by liberals”. This is not how the law works.

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