Republican frontrunner Donald Trump had a Rick Perry moment during a Fox News town hall Monday night when he vowed to do away with the “Department of Environmental,” an agency that does not exist.
When asked by Fox host Sean Hannity if he would eliminate any federal departments as President, Trump responded “largely, we can eliminate the Department of Education,” a common refrain among conservatives.
But he went on: “Department of Environmental, I mean, the DEP is killing us environmentally, it’s just killing our businesses.”
Let’s put aside for a moment that the DEP does not exist, it’s not even a correct acronym for “Department of Environmental”.
I think what Trump is referring to is the EPA, or the Environmental Protection Agency. When Trump claims that they (the EPA) are “killing us”, he has got that backwards. It is the Environmental Protection Agency who is preventing billionaire business owners, like Donald Trump, from killing us. For example:
Gaffes like this killed former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s chances for the nomination in 2012, when he struggled to come up with the EPA as one of the three agencies he would shutter until Mitt Romney stepped in with an assist.
Instances like these help prove how unqualified Donald J. Trump is for the Presidency of the United States of America.
Devil’s Advocate
Maybe Trump is so efficient, he eliminated the department before anyone was able to hear about it?
In a private document that was circulated over the weekend and obtained by The Washington Post, Trump campaign senior adviser Barry Bennett revealed the mounting frustrations among the billionaire’s top aides as they closed what had been a tumultuous week.
Entitled “Digging through the Bull Shit,” Bennett’s memo urged Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — who was charged with battery last week for yanking a reporter — and others to ignore critics who have questioned whether Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has waned.
“America is sick of them. Their idiotic attacks just remind voters why they hate the Washington Establishment,” Bennett wrote, citing tracking poll data favorable to Trump.
“Donald Trump 1,” Bennett declared, as if he was scoring the past week. “Washington Establishment/Media 0.”
Bennett, a frequent presence on television, also lashed out at political opponents for having “scurried” onto the cable-news airwaves to offer at times scathing critiques of the Trump campaign, whether it was over its delegate-accumulation strategy or Trump’s ability to win a general election.
As president, Donald Trump would sell off $16 trillion worth of U.S. government assets in order to fulfill his pledge to eliminate the national debt in eight years, senior adviser with the campaign Barry Bennett said.
“The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else,” Bennett told Chris Jansing Sunday on MSNBC. “We can get rid of government buildings we’re not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold.”
In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Trump said he would get rid of the $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years.” The article noted that most economists would consider Trump’s proposal impossible, as it could require slashing the annual federal budget by more than half.
Glenn Kessler, who writes the Post’s Fact Checker column, deemed the plan “nonsensical” and gave it “Four Pinocchios.” Kessler assessed that even if Trump were to eliminate every government function and shut down every Cabinet agency, he would still be short $16 trillion.
“We regret we have only Four Pinocchios to give for this whopper,” Kessler said. “Trump is insulting the intelligence of Americans for making such a claim in the first place.”
However, when pressed on whether the United States could sell off $16 trillion worth of assets, Bennett responded affirmatively on Sunday.
“Oh, my goodness,” he said. “Do you know how much land we have? You know how much oil is off shore? And in government lands? Easily.”
Reality
Under the Constitution the only land the Feds own is D.C., the ports, and military bases. The rest is owned by the States or private ownership. Read the Constitution Donald.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, as of September 2015 the federal government’s assets totaled $3.2 trillion. However, that does not include include stewardship assets or natural resources which are not valued.
Trump is also missing the point that the federal budget is already running a deficit. So before Trump can start paying down the debt, he needs to eliminate the deficit — which year after year, is adding to the national debt owed to bondholders.
In conclusion, if you have $19 trillion, subtract $3.2 trillion, you are left with $15.8 trillion. Math is math, and Trump’s doesn’t add up.
After his rallies in Arizona this weekend were marked by protests and violence, Donald J. Trump on Sunday complained of a “double standard” in coverage of those incidents and defended his campaign manager after video showed the manager grabbing a demonstrator by the collar and yanking him backward during a rally in Tucson.
Asked about the incident on ABC’s “This Week,” Mr. Trump allowed that the beating was “a tough thing to watch,” but he refused to condemn the assault. He offered harsher words for the victim, saying he had been accompanied by another protester provocatively wearing a Ku Klux Klan costume.
“At what point do people blame the protesters?” he said, calling them “professional agitators.”
Mr. Trump also complained about a roadblock by protesters who sought to prevent his supporters from reaching a rally outside Phoenix on Sunday.
“I think it’s very unfair that these, really, in many cases professional, in many cases sick, protesters can put cars in a road blocking thousands of great Americans from coming to a speech, and nobody says anything about that,” Mr. Trump said, adding: “It’s a very unfair double standard” and that the protesters had been holding “horrible, profanity-laden signs” in the background as television cameras recorded his speech.
Mr. Trump added that police officers and security guards in the Tucson arena had been “a little bit lax.”
Reality
While it is true that a few protesters initiated violence, thevastmajorityofviolence at Trump rallies is from Trump supporters. Trump, on multiple occasions, has defended violence against protesters, encouraged violence against protesters, and promised violence. It stands to reason that it is Trump’s actions and behavior that creates an environment where violence against protesters is acceptable.
According to the Washington Post the man in the Klu Klux Klan hood was a friend of the protester who was attacked, and it is not exactly clear what the intention of the protest was. Trump should stay away from a guilty-by-association fallacy with the KKK, with his family ties to the Klan and being in the same political party with David Duke and all.
During a Wisconsin Town Hall with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren, Trump again repeated comments long debunked, and never addressing those criticisms.
On immigration, Trump says he is “totally in favor of immigration” but people have to come in legally. He says he will build a wall and Mexico will pay for it. “It’ll be so easy,”
To much applause from the Fox News audience, Trump went on to claim it would take around $10 billion to build.
The claim that he can use a trade deficit with Mexico to force them to pay for a wall should enlighten you that Donald Trump does not understand how the world works. A trade deficit, which is also referred to as net exports, is an economic condition that occurs when a country is importing more goods than it is exporting.
The deficit equals the value of goods being imported minus the value of goods being exported, and it is given in the currency of the country in question. For example, assume that the United States imports from Mexico $800 billion dollars worth of goods, while exporting to Mexico only $750 billion dollars. In this example, the trade deficit, or net exports, with Mexico would be $50 million dollars.
In our example the holder of that $50 million dollars is the private (and probably some public) companies operating in Mexico, not the Mexican government. Essentially Trump is demanding that the Mexican government to pay for a wall with money that he should know it doesn’t have ownership of.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Thursday doubled down on his promise to not rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe.
“I don’t want to take cards off the table; I’d never do that,” Trump said during a phone interview on “The O’Reilly Factor,” adding, “the last person to press that button would be me.”
Guest host Eric Bolling acknowledged not ruling out using nuclear weapons against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but he pressed Trump about the possibility of using them in Europe.
“Europe is a big place. I’m not going to take cards off the table,” Trump said.
Trump raised eyebrows Wednesday for insisting during a town hall on MSNBC that he wouldn’t take nukes off the table in any situation, including in Europe.
The businessman has argued that he wants to remain unpredictable on foreign policy matters and has suggested a U.S. military presence in Japan and South Korea be replaced by their own nuclear arsenals.
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Thursday it’d be “catastrophic” if countries like Japan and South Korea obtained nuclear weapons, citing opposition to nuclear proliferation.
During his Fox News interview, Trump appeared to tout his opposition to the Iraq War in an attempt to cast himself as cautious on major foreign policy decisions.
“The last person that wants to play the nuclear card, believe me, is me,” Trump said.
Reality
Yes, Europe is a big place. That we can agree on.
Current US nuclear policy says we will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear opponents. That has been US policy for about a half-century. Just because that is policy doesn’t mean it is a great idea or anything, but what it does mean is that before you throw that policy under the bus, a policy which undergirds many of our defense alliances, you need to have some really good reason for doing so. “Not taking any cards off the table” is not such a reason.
This policy, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation policy, which tries to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of new countries, such as Iran, has helped to keep nuclear weapons from being used for over 65 years. Allowing new countries to obtain nuclear weapons would be bad to destabilizing in some cases.
Also side note, at the 2 minute mark in the media clip below Eric Boling admits to taking orders from the RNC.
Donald J. Trump said that women who seek abortions should be subject to “some form of punishment” if the procedure is banned in the United States, further elevating Republican concerns that his explosive remarks about women could doom the party in the fall.
The comment, which Mr. Trump later recanted, attracted instant, bipartisan criticism — the latest in a series of high-profile episodes that have shined a light on Mr. Trump’s feeble approval ratings among women nationally.
In this case, Mr. Trump also ran afoul of conservative doctrine, with opponents of abortion rights immediately castigating him for suggesting that those who receive abortions — and not merely those who perform them — should be punished if the practice is outlawed.
The statement came as Mr. Trump appeared at a town-hall-style forum with Chris Matthews of MSNBC, recorded for broadcast on Wednesday night. Mr. Matthews pressed Mr. Trump, who once supported abortion rights, on his calls to ban the procedure, asking how he might enforce such a restriction.
“You go back to a position like they had where they would perhaps go to illegal places,” Mr. Trump said, after initially deflecting questions. “But you have to ban it.”
He added, after a bit more prodding, “There has to be some form of punishment.”
Hours later, Mr. Trump recanted his remarks, essentially in full, a rare and remarkable shift for a candidate who proudly extols his unwillingness to apologize or bow to “political correctness.”
If abortion were disallowed, he said in a statement, “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman.”
“The woman is a victim in this case, as is the life in her womb,” he continued.
Reality
Donald Trump manged to anger literally every single person in the abortion debate. He upset the pro-choicers by being pro-life and his misogynistic stance to blame the woman, he upset some pro-lifers for going too far, and finally he upset the other pro-lifers for not going far enough.
Bravo, sir. Bravo.
This isn’t the first time Donald Trump flip-flopped on the abortion issue. For example in 1999 he told Meet the Press he was “very pro-choice“.
Donald Trump refused to take the use of nuclear weapons off the table in any situation, including in Europe or the Middle East, during a wide-ranging town hall on MSNBC.
The GOP presidential front-runner said he would consider using a nuclear weapon if the U.S. were attacked by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to an MSNBC transcript of the interview released Wednesday afternoon.
“Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” he said.
When host Chris Matthews asked if the real estate mogul could definitively say he wouldn’t use nuclear weapons, he responded: “I would never say that. I would never take any of my cards off the table.”
Matthews pressed him, asking if he would consider using nuclear weapons in Europe.
“No, I don’t think so,” Trump said, but he again said he wouldn’t definitively write off the option.
In a New York Times interview published over the weekend, Trump stressed the importance of unpredictability in his foreign policy. He told Matthews Wednesday that “you’d be a bad negotiator” for taking any strategy off the table.
He called nuclear weapons “sort of like the end of the ball game.”
“I’m not going to use nuclear, but I’m not taking any cards off the table,” he said.
Reality
The world freaked the fuck out upon hearing a candidate for the President of the United States was willing to use nuclear weapons against them should terrorists be found on their soil.
Japan, a country with a pacific constitution and knows first hand the power of nuclear weapons, was so concerned, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe felt the need to respond publicly, saying, “whoever will become the next president of the United States, the Japan-U.S. alliance is the cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy.”
South Korea, a country technically at war with the nuclear state North Korea, just had to deal with an H-bomb test by North Korea just a few weeks prior. This would not be the best time to threaten to pull out troops. The South Korean government reaction has been more focused on Trump’s assertion that South Korea is not paying its way. Furthermore Daniel Pinkston of Troy University said it would play into North Korea’s hands. “The hardliners in Pyongyang would just love such an outcome because if that were to occur, it would completely justify their nuclear status … and validate Kim Jong Un’s policy line as absolutely brilliant and absolutely correct.”
For the record, Japan spends more than $2 billion a year for the privilege of hosting U.S. forces, while South Korea pays close to $900 million, meaning it’s cheaper to the U.S. to keep our forces there than bring them home.
Police are looking for a man who pepper-sprayed a 15-year-old girl as opponents and supporters of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump clashed outside a Wisconsin rally.
The altercation is the latest in a series of confrontations that have marred recent Trump events.
Investigators have photos taken by participants at Tuesday’s demonstration outside of the Holiday Inn Express that could help to identify the man with the pepper spray, Janesville Police Sgt. Aaron Ellis said Wednesday.
Ellis said the girl told police she punched a man who groped her, and another man then pepper-sprayed her. The girl and a 19-year-old woman standing next to her were treated and released from a hospital, police said.
Ellis said the girl could face charges for punching the man, identified by the Wisconsin State Journal as Dan Crandall, of Milton.
“I didn’t touch her,” Crandall, a Trump supporter, told the newspaper. “She started to challenge why I was at the Trump rally since I was a grown man. I told her I was at the Trump rally because I was a grown man and I cared about my country.”
Crandall said someone standing behind him used the pepper spray. That person could be charged with illegal discharge of pepper spray since he was not using it in self-defense, Ellis said.
“It doesn’t appear that (the man who used the pepper-spray) was directly involved,” Ellis said. Police released a photo of the man suspected of using pepper spray on the girl, which shows him wearing a red hat with the Trump campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”
Reality
Donald Trump has declared in the past he would help to defend supporters who respond to protesters with violence in court. It is no surprise that violence is a common occurrence at Trump events.
Protests at Trump rallies do not occur in a vacuum. Since he first announced his candidacy, Trump continues to make racist, sexist, and authoritarian remarks that marginalizes anyone who do not meet his view of white and conservative enough. A full list of protests can be found here.
Video posted on social media shows the girl arguing with someone in the crowd before punching or pushing a person who was not shown on camera. The teen was then pepper-sprayed. As the young woman was blinded by the spray, Trump supporters cheered, and one man wearing Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” shouted at her, “You goddamn communist nigger-lover, get out of here.”
Donald Trump said that his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country may have the effect of motivating them to fight ISIS in order to attempt to return to the U.S. at some point.
Trump made the statement during an MSNBC town hall, when the GOP presidential front-runner was asked by Chris Matthews about the temporary ban he suggested in December.
Asked if Muslims would be more ill-disposed to fighting ISIS if a ban was imposed.
“I don’t know, maybe they’ll be more disposed to fight ISIS,” Trump said. “Maybe they’ll say, ‘We want to come back into America, we’ve got to solve this problem.'”
Here is the entire exchange:
MATTHEWS: But there’s 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. And they’re all getting the message from Donald Trump, who’s leading the fight for the Republican nomination for president, saying, “Stay out of my country.”
How does that encourage them to fight ISIS?
TRUMP: Chris (inaudible).
MATTHEWS: How does that encourage them to fight the bad guys?
TRUMP: OK, let me explain (inaudible). They have a problem too. They have a big problem.
MATTHEWS: But if we say “Go away…”
TRUMP: I have been told by more (inaudible) who are saying, “What are you doing is a great thing, not a bad thing.” The two people in San Bernardino…
MATTHEWS: Are any Muslims telling you that?
TRUMP: I have actually — believe it or not, I have a lot of friends that are Muslim and they call me.
MATTHEWS: Right.
TRUMP: In most cases, they’re very rich Muslims, OK?
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: But do they get in the country?
TRUMP: But they do call me. They’ll come in.
MATTHEWS: How do you let them in?
TRUMP: They’ll come in. And you’ll have exceptions.
MATTHEWS: But you…
TRUMP: Wait, wait, wait. Look, Chris, Chris, with the San Bernardino situation…
MATTHEWS: Right.
TRUMP: … many people saw that apartment with bombs all over the apartment…
MATTHEWS: Yeah, I agree with that.
TRUMP: … bombs on table.
MATTHEWS: You see something, say something.
TRUMP: Not one person…
MATTHEWS: I know.
TRUMP: … with all the people that said — they said it’s racial profiling. That’s why they didn’t call. You know why they said that? Because some lawyer said, “You know, you saw this, you better come up with a good excuse.” They said it’s racial profiling. A lot of people saw what was going on in that apartment. Not one Muslim, OK?
MATTHEWS: I’m with you on this. Of course I’m with you. But that’s not the question.
TRUMP: OK. Why didn’t they report ’em?
MATTHEWS: Look, look, you’re saying ban…
TRUMP: In other words, why — but Chris, why don’t they report ’em?
MATTHEWS: OK. You say ban them from entering the country. They get the message. Everyone in the world — over 1.6 — in Indonesia, Pakistan, everywhere. In Albania. Anywhere there’s Muslims, you know, they know you don’t want them. So they get the message. They’re a little more ill-disposed to fight ISIS, a little bit more after that once they say, “The Americans don’t even like us,” don’t you think?
TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe they’ll be more disposed to fight ISIS. Maybe they’ll say, “We want to come back into America, we’ve got to solve this problem.”
MATTHEWS: OK.
TRUMP: I’m serious about that. Maybe they’ll be…
Reality
Trump’s flip-flop on banning all Muslims is a proposal to create a 2-class system, those who are rich enough to afford to get past his ban and the rest who would be forced into military service to fight ISIS. This is interesting to note to the Trump supporters who believe that he would help out the common man when it is very clear from remarks like these that his views favor the wealthy.
I think Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, whose district includes parts of San Bernardino County, which suffered a deadly terrorist attack in December, said it best later in the day:
I think the thought we could have a religious test [for entrants] would be unconstitutional.
[But] we need to address the problem in terms of foreign fighters who might come back in the United States,” the congressman said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “We need to vet people who come in.”
