First they were “inner cities” – now they’re just “ghettos.”
Donald Trump once again appeared to equate an entire ethnicity with a socio-economic segment as he, during a campaign rally in Ohio on Thursday, pledged to “work with the African-American community” to solve the problem of the “ghettos.”
“And we’re going to work on our ghettos, are in so the, you take a look at what’s going on where you have pockets of, areas of land where you have the inner cities and you have so many things, so many problems,” Trump rambled to a mostly white audience in Toledo, appearing to catch himself using the politically tabooed word. “So many horrible, horrible problems. The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs.”
“Ghetto” is generally not used by public officials as it’s considered an outdated, insensitive word for struggling urban areas.
Trump has previously been rebuked for associating African-Americans – who comprise roughly 13% of the total population – with the words “inner cities.”
The Republican nominee has recently launched outreach efforts directed at black voters, but appears to have failed severely as polls have shown that less than 1% of African-American voters are going to punch in his name on the ballot.
At another point during the Toledo rally, Trump seemed to question the necessity for democracy.
“What a difference it is. I’m just thinking to myself right now – we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right?” he said in front of the roughly 2,800 rally attendants, comparing his presidential bid with Hillary Clinton’s.
Trump, meanwhile, is doubling down on past remarks about the election being “rigged” – an insinuation that political experts claim could have very real and very violent consequences.
Donald Trump went on the offensive against a military expert and former dean of the Army War College, Jeff McCausland, who said the Republican nominee’s comments this weekend about the battle to reclaim Mosul in Iraq show he doesn’t have a firm grasp of military strategy.
“You can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview.
On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the ongoing offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul is turning out to be a “total disaster.”
“We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. VOTE TRUMP and WIN AGAIN!” he tweeted.
Trump doubled down on his assertion that the element of surprise is an important military strategy.
“I’ve been hearing about Mosul now for three months. ‘We’re going to attack. We’re going to attack.’ Meaning Iraq’s going to attack but with us. OK? We’re going to attack. Why do they have to talk about it?” he asked Stephanopoulos.
“Element of surprise. One of the reasons they wanted Mosul, they wanted to get ISIS leaders who they thought were, you know, in Mosul. Those people have all left. As soon as they heard they’re going to be attacked, they left,” Trump added. “The resistance is much greater now because they knew about the attack. Why can’t they win first and talk later?”
But according to The New York Times, some military experts disagree with Trump’s claims that the element of surprise is crucial to win the fight against ISIS.
“What this shows is Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy,” McCausland told the Times.
McCausland replied to Trump’s comments to Stephanopoulos in a lengthy statement today, saying, “I can’t wait to sit down with Mr. Trump and hear what he has to teach me about military strategy. I’m happy to compare my record of over 45 years working in national security affairs with his any time.
“When it comes to the question of the Mosul offensive, Mr. Trump doesn’t understand that 99.9 percent of the troops involved are Iraqi,” McCausland continued. “I reassert my statement to The New York Times: Mr. Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy.”
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also hit Trump for his comments to Stephanopoulos yesterday at a joint campaign event with First Lady Michelle Obama in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, today.
“And yesterday when he heard a retired army colonel and former dean of the Army War College said that Donald doesn’t understand military strategy, Trump said ‘I’ll teach him a couple of things,'” she continued. “Well, actually, Donald, you’re the one who’s got a lot to learn about the military and everything else that makes America great.”
Defense Secretary Ash Carter is on the ground in Iraq and told ABC’s Martha Raddatz in an interview earlier this week that he’s “encouraged” by the progress in the fight against ISIS because it “is going according to plan … ISIL will surely be destroyed.”
Trump blamed Clinton and President Barack Obama for the need to reclaim Mosul.
“We had Mosul. We have to take it because Hillary Clinton and Obama left that big vacuum, and ISIS went in, and they took Mosul,” he said.
A visibly angry Newt Gingrich battled Megyn Kelly in a Tuesday night TV segment that left Donald Trump supporters accusing Kelly of bias.
Gingrich, speaking as a surrogate for Trump, said Kelly is “fascinated with sex” after Kelly brought up allegations of sexual assault and unwanted touching by the GOP nominee.
“You are fascinated with sex and you don’t care about public policy,” Gingrich said.
She responded: “You know what, Mr. Speaker, I’m not fascinated by sex, but I am fascinated by the protection of women, and understanding what we’re getting in the Oval Office.”
Gingrich advanced a common conservative complaint — that allegations against Trump are getting an undue amount of media attention.
The conversation ended with Kelly asserting that Gingrich — a paid Fox News contributor — had “anger issues.”
Gingrich addressed the segment on Twitter Wednesday morning, writing, “For the record, @megynkelly was wrong, i don’t have anger management issues. I do have media bias issues!”
Tuesday’s already tough segment turned fiery when Kelly raised the possibility — stated as a question, not a fact — that Trump could be a “sexual predator.”
Gingrich, who when he was Speaker of the House led the impeachment of Bill Clinton on charges related to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, objected to this. He tried to turn the conversation around by invoking allegations against Bill Clinton: “I just want to hear you use the words. I want to hear the words ‘Bill Clinton sexual predator.’ I dare you. Say ‘Bill Clinton, sexual predator.'”
Kelly did not take his bait.
Gingrich also seemed to dismiss Fox’s own electoral map, which shows Clinton well ahead of the 270 electoral votes she needs to win the presidency.
Kelly cited several such maps, including Fox’s, and said “these are nonpartisan outlets that are just trying to call the electoral scoreboard.”
“They’re not nonpartisan outlets,” Gingrich responded. “Every outlet you described is part of the establishment.”
“Fox News? Really? Are we? I don’t think so,” she said.
“Oh c’mon,” Gingrich said.
The segment ended up proving what Gingrich said at the very beginning: That Americans are living in “two parallel universes” right now.
Trump and his surrogates are having a very hard time distinguishing between Bill Clinton’s consensual sex and Donald Trump’s sexual assault. As conservative commentator Ana Navarro explained, “Sexual assault and sex are two different things. One is unwanted, one is wanted.”
Newt Gingrich made an interesting point that Megyn Kelly was fascinated with sex because was in a unique position to be somewhat of an expert being on his third marriage, cheated on his first two wives, asked them for an open marriage, and was having an affair while he was impeaching Bill Clinton.
But I’m sorry we were talking about Megyn Kelly and her supposed fascination with sex.
Donald Trump vowed Saturday to sue the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct in recent weeks.
“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” Trump said during remarks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. “Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
He added that a “simple phone call” to major news outlets “gets them wall-to-wall coverage with virtually no fact-checking ever.”
In the last two weeks, at least 10 women have come forward accusing Trump of inappropriately touching them. Their allegations came after a 2005 videotape surfaced of
Trump bragging about being able to grope women and get away with it.
Trump often threatens to file lawsuits without actually doing so. Earlier this month, he threatened to sue The New York Times when it published assault allegations against him, but nearly two weeks later, he has declined to follow through.
Trump went on to suggest Saturday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was behind the women’s allegations.
“It was probably the (Democratic National Committee) and Hillary’s campaign who put forward these liars with their fabricated stories,” he said. “But we’ll probably find out later through litigation, which we’re so looking forward to.”
Asked about Trump’s claim, Clinton, speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane Saturday night, simply said, “That’s just not accurate.”
Donald Trump regularly threatens to sue individuals who criticize him, but rarely follows through. But when he does and on the occasions that he wins he ruins that person’s life, like former Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin, who was forced to pay Trump $5 million dollars after a judgement went against her.
Lisa Bloom, who represents Jill Harth, who has accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances on her on two separate occasions in the early 1990s, replied to Trump on Twitter Saturday afternoon.
“If Trump sues accusers we then have subpoena power to require not only Trump but all his enablers to appear for depositions. A field day,” Bloom said as part of a series of tweets.
During the 3rd and final presidential debate, Donald Trump denied any allegations that he’s groped or kissed women, the Republican nominee attempted to deflect the claims with one of his own: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody.”
Then, not a half hour later and completely unprompted, Donald Trump spoke into his microphone to interrupt Hillary Clinton while she was answering a question about how she would raise taxes on the rich to tackle debt and entitlements if she were to become president, saying she was “such a nasty woman.”
“My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it,” Clinton said.
“Such a nasty woman,” Trump said into the microphone while Clinton was talking.
She continued her answer without acknowledging the insult.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump dug deeper in his dangrous efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the U.S. election, saying on Twitter on Sunday that he believed the results were being “rigged” at many polling places.
His tweet came hours after his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, said Republicans would accept the outcome of the Nov. 8 contest between Trump and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who is trailing Clinton in opinion polls, did not provide any evidence to back his allegations of impropriety at the voting booth.
The New York businessman, who has never held elective office, has often said the electoral process is skewed against him, including during the Republican nominating contests, when he disputed the method for winning delegates to the Republican National Convention.
His latest complaint of media bias stems from allegations by women that he groped them or made other unwanted sexual advances, after a 2005 video became public in which Trump was recorded bragging about such behavior. He apologized for the video but has denied each of the accusations.
“Election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!” Trump tweeted on Sunday, a sentiment he also expressed in posts and during rallies in Maine and New Hampshire on Saturday. The comments raised questions both from Republicans and Democrats about whether he would accept the outcome should he lose to Clinton.
Trump said after the first presidential debate in September that he would “absolutely” accept the election outcome. But a few days afterward, he told the New York Times: “We’re going to see what happens.”
He has also urged his supporters to keep an eye on voting locations to prevent a “stolen” election, which some critics interpreted as encouraging them to intimidate voters.
When asked for more detail about how the election will be rigged, Trump and members of his campaign have all pointed to “inner-cities” with largely African-American populations, such as Philadelphia.
Trump has called for “election observers” in these African-American communities where he hopes to place his supporters who are untrained in the election process to question individual voter’s eligibility, which many experts identify as voter intimidation.
Top Donald Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani claimed Sunday that Democrats could steal a close election by having dead people vote in inner cities, while vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said the ticket will “absolutely accept the result of the election.”
“I’m sorry, dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans,” the former New York City mayor told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “You want me to (say) that I think the election in Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair? I would have to be a moron to say that.”
But he did say the amount of cheating would only impact extremely close races — noting, for example, if either Trump or Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania by “5 points,” the cheating he alleges would occur would be negligible and not change the outcome.
Giuliani was backing up Trump, the Republican nominee, who has repeatedly claimed on the campaign trail — without providing evidence — that his race against Clinton is being rigged.
Trump tweeted Sunday: “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD”
But Pence told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that he will accept the Election Day results.
“We will absolutely accept the result of the election,” he said. “Look, the American people will speak in an election that will culminate on November the 8. But the American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media. That’s where the sense of a rigged election goes here, Chuck.”
Tapper pushed back on Giuliani, saying even Republicans had debunked the conspiracy theories pushed online that low vote totals in Philadelphia in 2012 for Mitt Romney were the result of a rigged process.
Giuliani said as a prosecutor, he remembers an election in Chicago in which 720 supposedly dead people voted — and that 60 dead people cast ballots in his own mayor’s race.
He said elections fraud would only make a difference in a 1 to 2 percentage point races.
He also said that only Democrats do it, because it happens in inner cities.
“I can’t sit here and tell you that they don’t cheat. And I know that because they control the polling places in these areas. There are no Republicans, and it’s very hard to get people there who will challenge votes. So what they do is, they leave dead people on the rolls and then they pay people to vote as dead people, four, five, six, seven” times, Giuliani said.
“I’ve found very few situations where Republicans cheat. They don’t control the inner cities the way Democrats do. Maybe if Republicans controlled the inner cities, they’d do as much cheating as Democrats do,” he said.
Tapper said: “I think there are a lot of elections experts that would have very, very strong disagreements with you.”
Giuliani responded: “Well then they never prosecuted elections fraud.”
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and also a top Trump ally, said on ABC’s “This Week” that Trump’s concerns about election rigging are “not about election officials at the precinct level.”
However, he also urged Trump voters to monitor polling stations.
“I remember when Richard Nixon had the election stolen in 1960, and no serious historian doubts that Illinois and Texas were stolen. So to suggest that, we have, you don’t have theft in Philadelphia is to deny reality,” Gingrich said.
Rudy Giuliani has spit out so many conspiracy theories and out-right lies, he is starting to conflate them all together. So not only does he not have any evidence for the two originating conspiracy theories, he would also not have any evidence for this new one he just invented, that dead people are voting in Philadelphia and Chicago, either.
First Giuliani is claiming that dead people are voting in elections, and to this there is a kernel of truth. For example earlier this year an investigation by CBS in Los Angeles uncovered 215 instances of voter impersonation since 2004 of people who have since deceased voting in local elections. However, unlike alt-right website like Breitbart who try to blow it way out of proportion calling it ‘hundreds‘, those numbers are so low compared to the 4.8 million registered voters in Los Angeles to hardly be a concern in a county that is so deeply blue it is often a target to conservatives. And while Rudy tries to paint this as a Democrat conspiracy, keep in mind in that report while 146 of the voters were indeed Democrats, 86 were registered Republicans.
And second, ever since the 2012 election there have been internet claims of voter fraud in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where 0 votes were cast for Mitt Romney. Even Sean Hannity jumped into these waters a few times, all of which have been debunked over and over again. In the 59 divisions of Philadelphia, the average number of registered Republicans in these divisions was 17 people. The Philadelphia Inquirer sought out these voters after the election and found that many people moved, some were registered incorrectly, and others just plain didn’t vote.
Trump delivered a vindictive and paranoid speech Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida where he attacked his sexual assault accusers, his rival Hillary Clinton, and the media who he feels are all coordinating to smear his good name in this election, despite his own previous racist, sexist, and violent speech.
But lost in this speech was a line delivered by Trump that, unless you are member of the white supremacist alt-right movement or studied and are familiar with whackjob conspiracy theories, you wouldn’t have realized that he was also referencing a centuries old debunked conspiracy theory still widely used in anti-Semitic circles, that claims a vast global Jewish conspiracy for world domination.
Trump said:
It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities…
We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors…
This is a struggle for the survival of our nation. Believe me. And this will be our last chance to save it on November 8. Remember that.
This election will determine whether we’re a free nation, or whether we have only an illusion democracy but in are in fact controlled by a small handful of special global interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged.
At this point you may snicker and scoff at the idea of a candidate for the President of the United States from a major political party was echoing anti-Semetic conspiracy theories, but Trump’s statement was not lost on the Jewish press, the Anti-Defamation League, and his alt-right and other white supremacist supports who are all very keenly aware of his meaning.
This article will explain to you, in very clear language, the story behind Trump’s barely coded words that directly echo one of the most ancient of all anti-Semitic libels.
The Conspiracy Theories
Make no mistake, these are all unsubstantiated ideas and any person who makes any of these claims does so without any evidence and are rooted in a history of hate and ignorance. In this racist perspective, Jews are typically painted as controllers of capital and money, “clannish,” and as having an agenda beyond what is visible. These stereotypes constitute a large part of these conspiracy theories.
The first conspiracy we’ll review is the accusation that Jews have long been controlling the global financial system. This loony conspiracy theory goes back centuries, even before the founding of Christianity, and recently has been attached to the Rothschild family, who during the 1800’s amassed the largest private fortune in modern world history.
Usually, the main accusation made by theorists is that the Rothschilds are playing both sides of every conflict, ever. The Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, World War II, etc. Theorists claim that all sides of each war were merely puppets of the Rothschilds, who would make exorbitant amounts of cash from repeatedly prodding nations into a cycle of endless warfare. People actually still believe this today. Remember when former actor Mel Gibson once said during a 2006 DUI that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world“? This is the same conspiracy theory he was referencing.
Jews have also long been accused of controlling the Hollywood and the media. For examples see any comedianin the past 100 years make fun of this.
Modern anti-Semitic conspiracy theories depicting an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences, such as the idea that “the Jews” command the U.S. Federal Reserve System and in effect control the world’s money, largely take their cue from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a 1903 tract purporting to be the manual of a Jewish secret society planning world domination. It is still widely circulated and occasionally cited as “evidence” by various clueless anti-Semites despite being exposed as a fraud as early as 1921.
The Conspiracy Pushers
Donald Trump has surrounded himself with people who are true believers in these archaic and long debunked views, and at times quoted them directly in speeches and interviews.
The most famous example would be nutcase right-wing conspiracy theory pusher Alex Jones, an ally of Trump who he once called “amazing” and someone who Trump regularly quotes, who runs the crackpot Infowars.com site and disputes the idea the The Protocols is a fraud while pushing a New World Order fiction that makes Glenn Beck appear comparatively sane.
According to Jones just about every current event can be tied into the New World Order’s nefarious schemes. In short, he’s making money off of really gullible people who will believe anything, no matter the complete lack of evidence.
Jones frequently invokes “globalists” as the villains behind the various conspiracy theories he discusses on his radio show and included in almost every article and documentary on his Infowars.com website has a reference to the Rothschild conspiracy theory, that there is secretive Jewish family controlling all word events for their personal monetary gain. Some examples of these articles include:
The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families (All eight families mentioned are either Jewish or have unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that they are “hiding” their Jewish heritage.)
There is also the alt-right white supremacist site Breitbart.com, whose Editor in Chief Steve Bannon is currently working as the CEO of the Trump campaign. BuzzFeed reported that Trump’s speech was co-written by Stephen Bannon. Breitbart.com has long had an anti-Semetic history since Bannon took charge, writing articles like:
After Jewish editor Ben Shapiro quit the site in protest of its Trump coverage, a piece was written sure to note he was an Orthodox Jew and featured an image of his face with a yellow pointed star.
Reality
These racist sources that push crazy conspiracies are where Trump is getting his information from, he is personally intertwined with its players, he repeatedly quotes it, and it is wildly insane and completely soaked in racism.
You and I may have not picked up on this racist “dog whistle” at first, but now we know more about the story behind when Donald Trump makes a statement like, “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers,” does his anti-Jewish message seem more clear?
Ben Carson says it doesn’t matter whether the women accusing Donald Trump of sexual misconduct are telling the truth because the accusations are far less important than what he believes is the impending fall of our nation.
Before they fall, nations “take their eye off the ball, start engaging in things that really don’t matter that much — not that sexual language and abuse is not important, but when you’re talking about the train going off the cliff you really need to deal with that first,” Carson said in a heated interview with the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday.
Carson — who has been known to veer off talking points when he’s acting as a surrogate for Trump — did say he had doubts about one of the women’s accounts. Jessica Leeds told The New York Times Trump grabbed her on a plane and tried to stick his hand up her skirt.
“If somebody is sitting next to you on the first class section of the airplane, there are stewardesses, there are people around and there’s this gigantic armrest — what happened to all those things?” Carson asked.
“Are you saying that these women are lying?” BBC News reporter Katty Kay asked. Carson avoided the question and said Kay was trying to characterize him as the bad guy.
When the conversation began to get heated Carson jumped in: “Hey can you turn her microphone off please? Turn her microphone off so I can talk.”
“It doesn’t matter whether they’re lying or not,” Carson said, he then added: “What matters is that the train is going off the cliff and we’re taking our eye off of that and we’re getting involved in other issues that can be taken care of later.”
Carson has repeatedly used the train analogy as an example of what’s at stake in this election. He believes Trump is the only candidate who can stop the train before it plummets off the cliff and he compared the recent accusations about Trump to a fight in one of the cabins, which is a distraction but not the big picture.
As Kay pointed out again that Carson’s description of the first class cabin suggests he thinks the women are lying Carson kept trying to interrupt.
“Listen, listen, would you listen for a moment? Do you guys have a plug please?” Carson asked someone off camera.
“It’s like hitting against a brick wall, getting people and particularly people in the news media, to understand how much trouble we’re in,” Carson said.
When the retired neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate was asked how he felt about the fact that multiple women have accused Trump of misconduct, Carson dismissed it.
The Republicans ran on a platform of moral authority, and with their defense of Donald Trump’s bragging of sexual assault and comments like Dr. Carson, it shows how thin their morals actually were.
Ben Carson for decades wrote books, gave speeches, and just this year ran for president on a platform of morality and now has chose to turn his back on his own message because it is politically beneficial to him.
Dr. Carson claimed there was a gigantic armrest in the first class seats that would have prevented anyone from invading another person’s space.
However while Dr. Carson chooses to use his “common sense” we’ll use actual verifiable evidence. According to Leeds’ interview with Anderson Cooper the flight was on Braniff Airlines flight, which had seats equipped with reclining armrests at that time.
So far, I’ve found photos of armrests stowing on 70s-80s vintage Braniff, National and TWA first class cabins. pic.twitter.com/UDuFpbNrsL
Donald Trump Jr. offered some unsolicited career advice for women concerned about sexual harassment in the workplace: Just quit, already.
“If you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, then you don’t belong in the workforce,” Donald Trump’s son told The Opie and Anthony Show in a 2013 interview that BuzzFeed just unearthed.
“You should go maybe teach kindergarten,” he said, apparently suggesting that teachers aren’t part of the workforce. “You can’t be negotiating billion-dollar deals if you can’t handle, like, you know.”
Gender-based harassment, both sexual and not, is against the law in the U.S. “It is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general,” according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
So if the GOP presidential nominee’s son can’t handle not being able to make offensive comments about women, maybe he’s the one unfit for the workforce.
Trump Jr. later joked that saying he’d been harassed would be “my get rich quick scheme. I’m now suing you guys because I feel uncomfortable.”
Listen to the full interview here, courtesy of BuzzFeed:
Trump’s father has been hit with a slew of allegations of sexual assault and harassment in recent days ― though it’s far from the first time he’s been accused of such behavior.
“What I found astounding is that he would so publicly—no matter who he was talking to ― that he would acknowledge that he engaged in the textbook definition of sexual assault,” Vice President Joe Biden said.
