Video footage from a legal deposition of Donald Trump released Friday suggests the Republican presidential candidate planned to call Mexicans “rapists” when he first announced his candidacy.
The offensive remarks were premeditated, Trump suggested under oath in a sworn video deposition taken June 16.
The deposition was part of a lawsuit Trump launched against a restaurateur who pulled out of a deal to open a restaurant in the billionaire businessman’s new Washington, D.C. hotel in response to his racism.
The deal fell apart after Trump made his offensive comments on the campaign trail.
It is one of two lawsuits Trump leveled against restaurants who said his nasty remarks were reason enough to end their business relationship.
“They thought I made statements that were inflammatory in some form,” Trump said, complaining of the response he’d received for his incendiary remarks.
Asked if he had planned “in advance” what he was going to say in that now-famous speech launching his campaign, he said “yes.”
“I mean, I’ve tapped into something. I’ve tapped into illegal immigration,” he said a minute later, bragging about his big primary win.
Trump’s team fought the video becoming public, but a judge ruled Friday that the candidate’s argument that it could be used in attack ads against him wasn’t enough reason to keep it sealed.
The GOP candidate said that he did “virtually nothing” to prepare for the sworn deposition, similar today his approach heading into the first presidential debate.
Update: In the title we referred to Alicia Machado as “Miss America,” she was Miss Universe.
Donald Trump has doubled down on his attacks on a former Miss Universe in a stream of early-morning tweets.
Trump’s verbal barbs directed at Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe title in 1996, started after the first presidential debate Monday when Hillary Clinton mentioned her and claimed that Trump used to call her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”
Rather than back away from the accusations, Trump has repeatedly defended his criticisms of the woman and her weight.
His latest came online this morning:
Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an "angel" without checking her past, which is terrible!
Researchers have looked and the so-called “sex tape” came from a reality television show called La Granja, which is nothing more than some grainy, night-vision footage of a couple of covered figures writhing in a bed, hardly qualifies as explicit. And reality television being what it is, the scene the tape depicts was quite possibly staged or fabricated.
Alicia Machado did pose topless for Playboy magazine, though.
However if Machado has a sex tape or not, this does not matter. The argument put forth at the first presidential debate was; Does Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump engage in bullying and sexism and are this qualities you would want in your President? And by Trump attempting deflect charges of sexism and bullying by turning around and engaging in sexist attacks against a woman’s weight and acting like the textbook definition of a bully over several days does not help his defense.
Donald Trump wanted to fire female employees he considered unattractive and replace them with better-looking women at a golf resort he owned, according to court documents from a 2012 lawsuit.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the court documents detail a lawsuit that alleges Trump pressured employees at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos to replace those he viewed to be unattractive female employees over a number of years in the 2000s.
The report comes as Trump has faced renewed criticism that he disrespects women, a narrative fueled by his controversial remarks about a former Miss Universe that he worked with when he owned the beauty pageant. Hillary Clinton raised in Monday’s debate the fact that he called Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” after she won his 1996 Miss Universe pageant.
Hayley Strozier, an employee at the golf club until 2008, alleged in a sworn declaration she “had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women.”
According to the LA Times report, the employees said in their lawsuit that they rotated employees schedules “so that the most attractive women were scheduled to work when Mr. Trump was scheduled to be at the club.”
The Trump Organization called the allegations “meritless.”
“We do not engage in discrimination of any kind,” said Jill Martin, vice president and assistant general counsel for The Trump Organization. “The statements made by a group of former disgruntled employees are far from an accurate portrayal of what it is like to work at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles. Mr. Trump’s sole focus is on ensuring that the facility and operation are providing the highest level of service and an unparalleled golf experience. The only appearance Mr. Trump cares about is that of the facility and the grounds. Rather than looking to old statements from a handful of employees with an ax to grind, the media should focus on the thousands of happy employees, of all races, gender, size and shape, whose lives upon which Mr. Trump has made an incredibly positive impact.”
In the lawsuit, employees claim that Trump’s stated preferences regarding female employees caused managers to value appearance over skill when making hiring and staffing decisions. They also allege that Trump himself made inappropriate and unprofessional comments toward female employees.
The LA Times described the case as a “broad labor relations lawsuit” that is “focused on the course’s high-pressure work culture” in addition to spotlighting the revelations about Trump’s treatment of female employees.
According to the Times’ report, “the bulk of the lawsuit was settled in 2013” with a $475,000 payment to plaintiff employees without any admission of wrongdoing. Another female employee who said she was fired for complaining about the treatment of women at the golf club agreed to a separate settlement with confidential terms.
After boasting about his support among Christian conservatives at a Iowa rally on Wednesday, Donald Trump asked non-Christians to identify themselves.
The Republican nominee first asked the crowd in Council Bluffs to raise their hands if they were Christian conservatives. The crowd cheered loudly and a sea of hands went up.
“Raise your hand if you’re not a Christian conservative,” Trump then said. “I want to see this, right? Oh there’s a couple people, that’s all right.”
“I think we’ll keep them, right?” Trump asked the crowd. “Should we keep them in the room, yes? I think so.”
While the Republican nominee’s jocular tone suggested he wasn’t seriously suggesting throwing non-Christian attendees out of the event, he has made similarly off-color “jokes” before.
At the end of Monday night’s presidential debate, Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of taunting one of his former Miss Universe contestants about her weight.
Clinton said the Republican nominee’s criticisms of Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan who won the Miss Universe contest in 1996, was “one of the worst things he said” about women. “He called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina.”
While Trump appeared to dispute Clinton’s accusation on the debate stage, he called into Fox and Friends Tuesday morning and once again called Machado fat.
“I know that person. That person was a Miss Universe person,” Trump told the Fox News morning show. “And she was the worst we ever had, the worst, the absolute worst, she was impossible,” he said. “She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem. We had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude.”
With his past statements about Machado playing into critiques Clinton wanted to make at Monday night’s high-profile debate, the Clinton campaign was quick to pounce. An hour after the debate ended, her campaign tweeted a two-minute video about Machado’s experience with Trump.
“He was very overwhelming. I was very scared of him,” she says in Spanish. “He’d yell at me all the time. He’d tell me ‘you look ugly’ or ‘you look fat.’ Sometimes he’d ‘play’ with me and say ‘Hello Miss Piggy, hello Miss Housekeeping.’ ”
Donald Trump called her "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping."
The Clinton campaign’s video also includes archived footage of Trump telling reporters “she weighed 118 pounds, or 117 pounds, and she went up to 160 or 170. So this is somebody who likes to eat.”
Articles at the time confirm Trump’s comments.
In 1997, Donald Trump told Howard Stern that Machado was an “eating machine” who “ate a lot of everything.” “You whipped this fat slob into shape,” the radio host told Trump. “I don’t know how you did it. I see all these diet plans, everything else. God bless you.” When asked if Trump had “gotten her down to 118,” he said she is going to be there soon.
Around the same time, Trump told Newsweek: “We’ve tried diet, spa, a trainer, incentives. Forget it, the way she’s going, she’d eat the whole gymnasium.”
Machado told the Washington Post at the time she was caught by surprise about reporters being present. “I asked him to please send me to a trainer or a nutritionist or something because I needed some orientation, and he sends me to a gym in New York,” she said. “When I get there, there are 80 reporters waiting to watch me sweat. I thought that was in very bad taste.”
Donald Trump wrote in his 1997 book Art of the Comeback, “I could just see Alicia Machado, the current Miss Universe, sitting there plumply. God, what problems I had with this woman. First, she wins. Second, she gains 50 pounds. Third, I urge the committee not to fire her. Fourth, I go to the gym with her, in a show of support. Final act: She trashes me in The Washington Post — after I stood by her the entire time. What’s wrong with this picture? Anyway, the best part about the evening was the knowledge that next year, she would no longer be Miss Universe.”
Machado told the campaign that the experience led to long-term eating disorders. “I wouldn’t eat, and I would still see myself as fat, because a powerful man had said so.”
“He always treated me like a little thing. He always treated me like trash,” Machado said Tuesday in a conference call organized by the Clinton campaign.
She said she was caught off-guard when Clinton talked about her Monday night. “I started to cry because I never imagined that someone so important would care about my story,” she said, speaking in Spanish.
“I’m very sorry that I might be an uncomfortable person for Mr. Trump,” Machado said, “but that’s how things happen, that’s how things go.”
"She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem." —Trump just defended his attacks on Fmr. Miss Universe Alicia Machado. pic.twitter.com/HbVtaBpK3R
Trump has pledged to sign the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), if passed by congress. It was first introduced in the House on June 17, 2015 and would effectively legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination across the board, including among employers, businesses, landlords and healthcare providers, as long as they claim to be motivated by a firmly held religious beliefs.
The statement, added to Trump’s website on Thursday under the title “Issues Of Importance To Catholics” and the subtitle “Religious Liberty,” reads:
Religious liberty is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is our first liberty and provides the most important protection in that it protects our right of conscience. Activist judges and executive orders issued by Presidents who have no regard for the Constitution have put these protections in jeopardy. If I am elected president and Congress passes the First Amendment Defense Act, I will sign it to protect the deeply held religious beliefs of Catholics and the beliefs of Americans of all faiths. The Little Sisters of the Poor, or any religious order for that matter, will always have their religious liberty protected on my watch and will not have to face bullying from the government because of their religious beliefs.
Prohibits the federal government from taking discriminatory action against a person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.
Defines “discriminatory action” as any federal government action to discriminate against a person with such beliefs or convictions, including a federal government action to:
alter the federal tax treatment of, cause any tax, penalty, or payment to be assessed against, or deny, delay, or revoke certain tax exemptions of any such person;
disallow a deduction of any charitable contribution made to or by such person;
withhold, reduce, exclude, terminate, or otherwise deny any federal grant, contract, subcontract, cooperative agreement, loan, license, certification, accreditation, employment, or similar position or status from or to such person; or
withhold, reduce, exclude, terminate, or otherwise deny any benefit under a federal benefit program.
Requires the federal government to consider to be accredited, licensed, or certified for purposes of federal law any person who would be accredited, licensed, or certified for such purposes but for a determination that the person believes or acts in accordance with such a religious belief or moral conviction.
Permits a person to assert an actual or threatened violation of this Act as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding and to obtain compensatory damages or other appropriate relief against the federal government.
Authorizes the Attorney General to bring an action to enforce this Act against the Government Accountability Office or an establishment in the executive branch, other than the U.S. Postal Service or the Postal Regulatory Commission, that is not an executive department, military department, or government corporation.
Defines “person” as any person regardless of religious affiliation, including corporations and other entities regardless of for-profit or nonprofit status.
But following the tweet by the Republican presidential candidate’s son, the company that owns Skittles, Wrigley, stepped in.
“Skittles are candy. Refugees are people,” said Denise Young, vice-president of corporate affairs for Wrigley America.
“We don’t feel it is an appropriate analogy,” she added. “We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing.”
Meanwhile the photographer who took the picture of the Skittles said the picture was used without his permission and revealed that he was himself a former refugee.
In the US, each year, you are far more likely to die due to choking on candy than due to a terrorist attack by a refugee. According to the US National Safety Council and Cato Institute you have a:
1 in 3,408 chance of choking to death on food
1 in 3,640,000,000 chance of being killed by a refugee in a terror attack
The fact is, the refugee resettlement program is the single most difficult way to enter the United States. So refusing refugees was truly about preventing some “Trojan horse” terrorist, it is such a highly ineffective policy that should put into question the very qualifications of this candidate.
Instead this follows a pattern of white supremacist from Donald Trump Jr. and his father and keeping brown people with different beliefs from them out of the country. Some examples include:
On March 3rd, Donald Trump Jr. appeared on a radio show and took questions from a known white supremacist.
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 August, 29th, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a post from known white supremacist Kevin MacDonald.
On September, 10th, Donald Trump Jr. shared a meme with him next to a white nationalist symbol.
Donald Trump’s campaign chair in a crucial Ohio county has resigned after an interview with the Guardian in which she said there was no racism in America until the election of Barack Obama.
Kathy Miller, who was coordinating the Republican nominee’s campaign in Mahoning County, apologized for her “inappropriate” remarks on Thursday and said she would no longer have a role with the campaign.
Her resignation came just hours after the release of the first film in a series of election videos, Anywhere but Washington.
The video included an interview with Miller in which she said there was “no racism” during the 1960s and claimed black people who have not succeeded over the past half-century only have themselves to blame.
“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said.
“You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”
Miller added: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this … Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”
Mark Munroe, the Mahoning chair for the GOP, said he immediately contacted the Trump campaign in Ohio asking for Miller to be dismissed over her “insane comments”.
He told the Guardian that Trump had undertaken impressive steps to appeal to minority voters and that Miller’s remarks risked jeopardizing his standing in Ohio. “We should not let those really inappropriate comments affect the Trump campaign.”
Miller’s resignation follows in the wake of months of commentary from Trump about race that African American commentators have widely interpreted as offensive.
During the primaries Trump was condemned for initially failing to disavow support from a former Ku Klux Klan leader and last month asked black voters “what do you have to lose?” by supporting his bid for the White House.
On Tuesday, Trump told supporters in North Carolina: “African American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they’ve ever been in before. Ever, ever ever.”
Mahoning, the eastern Ohio county where Miller was coordinating Trump’s campaign, is a historically Democratic stronghold that includes Youngstown, a former steel city that has experienced decades of economic decline.
The county is reputedly “ground zero” for disaffected white, working-class Democrats who are drawn to Trump’s promise to boost manufacturing by renegotiating international free-trade agreements.
Before the primaries, some 6,000 Democrats in Mahoning switched party affiliation to Republican, reportedly to vote for Trump.
As well as chairing the campaign in Mahoning, a volunteer role, Miller was an official Ohio elector to the electoral college for the Trump campaign. She said in a statement that she had decided to resign from both positions.
“My personal comments were inappropriate, and I apologize. I am not a spokesperson for the campaign and was not speaking on its behalf,” she said. “I have resigned as the volunteer campaign chair in Mahoning County and as an elector to the electoral college to avoid any unnecessary distractions.”
Bob Paduchik, Ohio state director for the Trump campaign, said he had replaced Miller with another local campaigner. “Our county chairs are volunteers who signed up to help organize grassroots outreach like door-knocking and phone calls, they are not spokespeople for the campaign.”
Donald Trump has faced criticism after declaring that African Americans are in the worst shape “ever, ever, ever”, in a town named after a slaveholder.
The Republican nominee’s latest outreach to black voters, at a North Carolina rally, drew a swift backlash.
Many on social media questioned whether Mr Trump had considered the US history of slavery and segregation.
It follows a report that his charity used funds to settle lawsuits for which he was personally liable.
At Tuesday’s campaign event in Kenansville, the White House hopeful said: “We’re going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they’ve ever been in before.
“Ever, ever, ever.”
He continued: “You take a look at the inner cities, you get no education, you get no jobs, you get shot walking down the street.
“They’re worse, I mean honestly, places like Afghanistan are safer than some of our inner cities.
“And I say to the African-American communities, and I think it’s resonating, because you see what’s happening with my poll numbers with African Americans. They’re going, like, high.”
The businessman-turned-politician is continuing his outreach to African-American voters by meeting a group of pastors Wednesday in Cleveland, Ohio.
The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher says Mr Trump’s recent overtures to the black community may be aimed primarily at assuring moderate white voters of his racial sensitivity.
According to recent polls, he still faces an uphill climb in winning over even a modest level of black support.
Aside from a blip in one unconventional tracking poll, Mr Trump’s black support continues to be mired in low single digits.
This is roughly equal to the levels earned by the Republicans who ran against Barack Obama, the first black US president.
Last month, Mr Trump also raised eyebrows when he asked black voters: “What do you have to lose?”
He told a nearly all-white audience in Michigan that African Americans “are living in poverty” and their “schools are no good”.
Mr Trump said his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, “would rather provide a job to a refugee” than to unemployed black youths.
One need not be a scholar to be familiar with generations of slavery, discrimination, state-sanctioned bigotry, red-lining, lynchings, segregation, and Jim Crow laws.
But as NPR points out, the data shows Trump is wrong. For example:
The black unemployment rate is more than 8 percent – that’s more than three points higher than the national average. But it’s halved from the recent post-recession high of 16.6 percent.
African Americans with a bachelor’s degree or more has more than tripled (from 6.6 percent to 22.2 percent 40 years ago) and roughly one-third of 18-24-year-olds are enrolled in college.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump praised the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police tactic Wednesday, saying it “worked incredibly well” when it was used in New York City.
Trump was speaking at a town hall moderated by Fox News’ Sean Hannity at a mostly black church in Cleveland, Ohio when he was asked how he would stop violence in black communities.
In response, Trump pointed to “stop-and-frisk”, which allows police to stop and search any person officers deem suspicious.
“I think you have to [do it],” Trump said. “We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive.”
“Now, we had a very good mayor, but New York City was incredible, the way that worked, so I think that could be one step you could do.”
“Stop-and-frisk” drew complaints from New York City minorities, who claimed they were being disporportionately stopped for searches by officers. In 2013, a federal court ruled that the practice was unconstitutional and its use has since been scaled back.
Donald Trump isn’t the “law and order candidate,” but the “every failed police tactic that targeted minorities candidate.”
Trump failed to mention that in every city where stop-and-frisk was implemented, they have become case studies in the perils of such an approach. And it was quite brazen of Trump to promote it at an African American forum since it overwhelming targeted based om race, not reasonable suspicion, and caused African American, Latino, and other minority communities to distrust the police and avoid them when nearby.
Four of the five biggest American cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia — have all used stop-and-frisk tactics in an attempt to lower crime. Despite what Trump says, the results are mixed, and in each city the methods have been found unconstitutional for disproportionately targeting minorities.
For example, in Donald Trump’s hometown the NYPD’s practices were found to violate New Yorkers’ Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and also found that the practices were racially discriminatory in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Trump wants to take this nationally.
The most proven form of policing is when officers work with communities thereby gaining trust of a population. So when there is an issue in their neighborhood, residents are more likely to open up and offer evidence.
