During two separate discussions of Black Lives Matters protests on Tuesday, Donald Trump claimed that people have called for moments of silence for Micah Johnson, the gunman who killed five police officers in Dallas and injured nine others, without specifying who or where.
On an O’Reilly Factor segment filmed earlier in the day, Trump expressed disgust with the actions of the officers who shot Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and said it “could be” that police treat African-Americans differently, but criticized the Black Lives Matter movement as “dividing America.” Trump then said:
“I saw what they’ve said about police at various marches and rallies. I’ve seen moments of silence called for for this horrible human being who shot the policemen.”
Asked by the Fox News host if there was a divide between blacks and whites in America, Trump used this as an example of how “there would seem to be.” Then Trump went on to say:
“It’s getting more and more obvious and it’s very sad, very sad. When somebody called for a moment of silence to this maniac that shot the five police, you just see what’s going on. It’s a very, very sad situation.”
Trump repeated the claim Tuesday night, saying at a rally in Indiana:
“The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage. Marches all over the United States—and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!”
No news reports appear to corroborate his claim and on social media, news agencies have reached out to the Trump campaign for comment and have not yet heard back.
Gawker could only find two posts asking for a moment of silence for Johnson. No video.
Talking Points Memo found searches on social media for people making such calls came up short, with no evidence of video.
ABC News has been able to find one person who posted on two of his social media accounts calling for a moment of silence, but no evidence of video.
Trump advisor Sam Clovis was forced to admit he had not witnessed what Trump said he has witnessed on CNN.
This is not the first time Donald Trump has made false claims of ethnic groups praising a tragedy.
In November 2015, Trump repeatedly defended his debunked claim that thousands of Muslims were celebrating in the streets of New Jersey after 9/11. Of course this also turned out to not be true.
Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday tweeted an image of a Disney book featuring a six-pointed star in an attempt to draw comparisons to an anti-Hillary Clinton image he tweeted this past weekend.
“Where is the outrage for this Disney book? Is this the ‘Star of David’ also? Dishonest media!” he tweeted, with an image of a book from Disney’s “Frozen.”
The book features a six-pointed star with the words “With 50 stickers!” written on it.
As we explained in detail before, the star Trump used in his original tweet is not a sheriff’s badge. And original meme Trump shared wasn’t controversial just because it used a 6-pointed star, like this Frozen sticker book cover does, but specifically because the meme was created by a white supremacist, implied antisemitic stereotypes with the Star of David on a bed of money, and originally posted on a neo-Nazi message board.
Today, Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray noticed that Donald Trump Jr., who has been taking a large role in his father’s campaign, had “liked” a tweet by one of the worst and most active member of the “alt-right” movement on Twitter:
The user, @Ricky_Vaughn99, his Twitter timeline is absolutely full of hateful racist and anti-Semitic tweets; there’s no way Trump Jr. could possibly have missed it. Yet he chose to follow this user.
Some recent tweets from Ricky_Vaugn99, who’s being followed by the son of the Republican Party’s nominee for president of the US, include:
Donald Trump brushed off concerns Monday about possible anti-Semitic imagery in a tweet posted from his account.
The tweet, which was posted and deleted Saturday, featured a picture of Hillary Clinton on a backdrop of money next to a six-sided star that read “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” It drew widespread backlash almost immediately for resembling the Star of David, an important Jewish symbol.
After the tweet was deleted, a revised graphic was posted to Trump’s Twitter account, this time with a circle subbed in for the star.
The presumptive Republican nominee tweeted Monday:
Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star!
Trump campaign adviser Ed Brookover echoed his boss, telling CNN’s “New Day” on Monday morning that there was “never any intention of anti-Semitism,” adding that Trump has denounced it in the past.
“Not every six-sided star is a Star of David,” Brookover said. “We have corrected this tweet and have moved on.”
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who is now a paid CNN commentator, pushed back against criticism on Saturday, saying the uproar was “political correctness run amok.”
Donald Trump placed the blame of this controversy entirely at the feet of the media and claimed that what was tweeted out was simply just a sheriff star. However this “sheriff’s star” defense does not address the ethical and logical gaps about Trump’s controversial tweet.
First, let’s look at some sheriff stars. This is an actual 6-pointed sheriff’s star. It has rounded points.
This is a graphic clip-art of a 6-pointed sheriff’s star. It again has rounded points and is encased in a circle.
This is the Star of David. It has no circle surrounding it and has sharp points.
Second, there was no explanation for how the image made its way from a neo-Nazi message board to his Twitter followers. Mic.com discovered that Donald Trump’s Twitter account wasn’t the first place the meme appeared. The image was previously featured on /pol/ — an Internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists newly emboldened by the success of Trump’s rhetoric — as early as June 22, over a week before Trump’s team tweeted it.
The watermark on the lower-left corner of the image leads to a Twitter account that regularly tweets violent, racist memes commenting on the state of geopolitical politics. After being uncovered as the origin of the meme that Twitter user had deleted the account.
That means somebody on the Trump campaign saw the image on a white supremacist message board or Twitter account, copied the image, edited the image, and posted it to Trump’s twitter account.
Finally, as previously reported, someone in the Trump campaign noticed the symbol, voluntarily took the tweet down, and re-posted an edited meme now with a poorly photoshopped circle over the star. So someone in his campaign had to be aware of the imagery and what it could construe.
He just put the circle on top of the Star of David. You can still see its points. pic.twitter.com/PjNSp38T3X
Accusing rival Hillary Clinton of corruption, Donald Trump sent a controversial tweet Saturday morning, invoking a six-pointed Star of David — a well-known Jewish symbol — overlaid on piles of money.
The graphic appears to be photoshopped from several different elements, including a Fox News poll that found 58 percent of voters believed Clinton to be “corrupt.” It’s juxtaposed against a photo of Clinton and a riff off her own campaign statement about making history as the first presumptive female nominee of a major party.
Next to Clinton is a red six-pointed Star of David with text reading “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” Hundred-dollar bills are scattered in the photo behind her.
It raised the eyebrows of more than a few Twitter users, several bluntly called the tweet anti-Semitic.
Trump later tweeted an amended version of the graphic, nearly two hours after the Twitter firestorm began. The latest version uses a red circle in place of the Star of David:
Trump has defended against accusations of anti-semitism and racism before.
When Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition in December 2015, he tried to relate to the crowd by invoking the stereotype of Jews as talented and cunning business-people.
“I’m a negotiator, like you folks”
And when he said:
“You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” he said, adding that, “you want to control your own politician.”
During a rally on Friday, he provoked anger when he asked a Turkish reporter whether he was friend or foe, days after suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 43 people at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.
A voice in the crowd in Denver called out: “Turkey.”
Mr Trump responded directly, asking: “Are you from Turkey, sir? Good… congratulations.”
He then turned to the audience, saying: “I think he’s friend. Are you friend or foe?”
He then went on to talk about the country’s response to ISIL.
“Turkey, by the way, should be fighting ISIL,” he said. “I hope to see Turkey go out and fight ISIL.”
The crowd cheered his words but they provoked anger among commentators, who pointed out that Turkey was a US ally, has provided bases for war planes attacking ISIL positions, and its own jets have run missions against the jihadist group.
However Turkey is also known to be playing a “double game” by refusing to stop ISIL fighters from crossing their southern border to attack their common enemy, the Kurds.
Donald Trump continues to propagate his dangerous “us versus them” mentality.
This is not the first time Trump has asked someone their allegiance at a campaign event. During rallies, when the presumptive GOP nominee hears sounds of a disruption, sometimes Trump will yell out the question to gauge whether the noise is coming from protesters or cheering fans.
If the noise is coming from a “foe” of Donald Trump, he usually follows with “Get them the hell out!”
Donald Trump’s trade speech Thursday veered off course when he didn’t stop a woman who, while pointing to her head, objected to the “heeby jobbies” worn by some employees at the Transportation Security Administration.
The comment during a town hall in New Hampshire was an apparent reference to hijabs, or headscarfs, that some Muslim women wear.
When the woman urged him to replace Muslims with U.S. military veterans at TSA, Trump said, “And we are looking at that,” seemingly indicating he was considering a new policy.
Reality
Racism isn’t necessarily what we say, it can also be what we don’t say.
Donald Trump let a woman make an incredibly insensitive comment, did not correct her, and even went so far to say yeah maybe we should look into removing Muslims from working at the TSA.
Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States has been a central issue of his campaign — but he has described the ban differently in the weeks since the mass shooting in Orlando.
While gaggling with reporters as he toured his golf club here, Trump suggested in an offhand comment that his ban wouldn’t apply to Muslims from countries not typically associated with terrorism.
“It wouldn’t bother me, it wouldn’t bother me,” Trump said when asked whether he would allow a Scottish Muslim into the U.S. under his policy.
His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, told CNN Saturday that Trump supports barring only Muslims from “terror states,” not all Muslims.
Trump even indicated that the ban is not ironclad, telling CNN in a brief interview on Saturday he would consider allowing Muslims from states with heavy terrorist activity to enter the U.S., as long as they are “vetted strongly.”
He also told the Daily Mail that individuals from “terror countries” would be “even more severely vetted” but could ultimately be allowed entry into the country.
“People coming from the terror states — and you know who I’m talking about when I talk about the terror states — we are going to be so vigilant you wouldn’t believe it and frankly a lot will be banned,” Trump told CNN after touring his golf course here.
Trump also focused on the need to ban individuals from “terrorist countries” in an interview later Saturday with Bloomberg Politics.
“I want terrorists out. I want people that have bad thoughts out. I would limit specific terrorist countries and we know who those terrorist countries are,” Trump said, again not specifying which countries would be included.
With the many other flip-flops since becoming the Republican party’s nominee, Trump rejected almost every stance that his supporters loved which separated him from the other Republican primary candidates.
On December 7th, 2015, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a statement calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can “figure out what is going on.” The reasons Trump cited for the Muslim ban included studies that did not exist and unsubstantiated claims that there was a “great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population” and the that “it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension.”
It was a statement that, by far, was one of the most bigoted statements Trump, or any other politician, has made in our lifetime.
Donald Trump said Sunday that in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, it’s time for the United States to start looking at racial profiling as a preventative tactic.
The presumptive GOP nominee said in a phone interview with CBS’ Face the Nation:
Well I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country. Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads.
“It’s not the worst thing to do,” he added.
Trump’s comments come one week after 49 people were shot and killed in a gay nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Following the massacre, Trump renewed his calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., saying it would have prevented the attack despite the fact that shooter Omar Mateen was born in the U.S.
On Sunday, the GOP politician also said attacks like Orlando would stop if those in the Muslim community would “report” suspicious things.
“When you look at, when you look at people within the Muslim community and where people are living and they don’t report, and a good example of that would be San Bernardino,” he said. “I mean, they had bombs all over their apartment floor and people saw it and nobody reported them, and 14 people were killed, many injured.”
Mateen, Trump added, had definite “red flags” before the attack. “You look at his past, I mean? I’ve never seen a past quite like that,” he said of Mateen. “You look at his record in school, you look at a lot of other things. There were a lot of red flags, this was not a very good young man.”
“We understand there are problems with that because some people are on the terror watch list that shouldn’t be on,” he said. “So I’m working with the NRA, we’re discussing it and again the NRA has the best interests of our country, it just has the absolute best interests of our country.”
Asked about GOP leaders’ criticism of him in recent days, especially over his renewed focus on the Muslim ban, Trump said those Republicans should stop “talking so much” and just “do their job.” The issue is compounded, he added, when the media focuses more on his detractors in the GOP than his supporters.
“I think that honestly they should go about their business and they should do a wonderful job and work on budgets and get the budgets down and get the military the kind of money they need and lots of other things, and they shouldn’t be talking so much,” he said. “They should go out and do their job, let me do my job.”
However according to Trump’s suggestion, we should be racially profiling white Christian males because you are more than 7 times as likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than by Muslim terrorists.
In a speech reacting to the massacre in Orlando where 50 people were killed, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump doubles down on his proposal to ban immigration of Muslims, and he expanded his proposal to “suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or allies.”
Speaking at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Trump did not mention foreign policy, discuss the fight against terrorist group ISIS, or propose solutions to combat hate or extremism, instead he said the attack early Sunday morning at the Pulse nightclub was the result of the U.S.’s immigration policies.
Trump said, reading from a teleprompter:
“The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here. That is a fact, and it’s a fact we need to talk about.”
The killer was an American born in New York but his father is an immigrant from Afghanistan.
Trump had originally said he would temporarily suspend immigration from Muslims, but he was starting to soften that idea in recent weeks. But after Sunday’s horror, he went further.
“The ban will be lifted when we as a nation are in a position to properly and perfectly screen those people coming into our country. We are importing radical Islamic terrorism into the west through a failed immigration system.”
Trump also attacked presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton throughout his speech, saying she “cannot be a friend of the gay community as long as she” supports current immigration policies. The shooting took place at a nightclub frequented by members of the LGBT community.
He said Clinton wants to “ban guns” and “abolish the Second Amendment.” (Clinton has never said she wants to ban guns or the Second Amendment but she does support banning assault weapons.)
Trump noted that he will “be meeting with the NRA … “to discuss how to ensure Americans have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror.”
Then she wants to “admit the very people who want to slaughter us,” he said.
He also said President Barack Obama has knee-capped the intelligence agencies.
“They’re not being allowed to do their job,” Trump said.
But since he was elected in 2008, the president has supported most surveillance mechanisms used by the intelligence agency implemented under the PATRIOT Act. He pushed for a five year extension that eventually passed Congress in December of 2012.
“As President I will give our intelligence community, law enforcement and military the tools they need to prevent terrorist attacks,” Trump said. “Truly, our President doesn’t know what he is doing. He has failed us, and failed us badly, and under his leadership, this situation will not get any better — it will only get worse.
He also said President Barack Obama has knee-capped the intelligence agencies.
“They’re not being allowed to do their job,” Trump said.
But since he was elected in 2008, the president has supported most surveillance mechanisms used by the intelligence agency implemented under the PATRIOT Act. He pushed for a five year extension that eventually passed Congress in December of 2012.
“As President I will give our intelligence community, law enforcement and military the tools they need to prevent terrorist attacks,” Trump said. “Truly, our President doesn’t know what he is doing. He has failed us, and failed us badly, and under his leadership, this situation will not get any better — it will only get worse
