Over the course of 12 minutes, Donald Trump used a campaign rally in San Diego on Friday night to lace into the judge overseeing a lawsuit over Trump University, calling him a “hater” and speculating about his ethnicity.
“The trial is going to take place sometime in November. There should be no trial. This should have been dismissed on summary judgment easily,” Trump said. “Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel.”
“I’ll be seeing you in November, either as president…” Trump said, trailing off. “I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s doing this.” Trump brought up Curiel’s ethnicity: “The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican…I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump.”
Several lawsuits — two in federal court in San Diego and one in state court in New York — allege that Trump’s now-defunct real estate school, Trump University, made false claims about instructors’ experience. Trump has already acknowledged in a deposition that he did not hand-pick the teachers, as marketing materials claimed, though he insists the program was valuable.
“They actually did a very good job, but I’ve won most of the lawsuits,” he said during a GOP debate in February.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly attacked Curiel and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, claiming the former is “Spanish” and the latter is out to get him for electoral gain.
At Friday night’s rally, he got more specific, telling the crowd he believes Curiel — who was born in the United States — is Mexican.
“The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great, I think that’s fine,” Trump said, according to the LA Times. “You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs, OK?”
Curiel, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court in November 2011 by President Barack Obama, previously served as a Superior Court judge in San Diego and, for 17 years prior to that, as a federal prosecutor. He was born in East Chicago in 1953 and earned his J.D. in 1979 from the Indiana University School of Law. From 1999-2002, Curiel headed the Narcotics Enforcement Division for the Southern District of California, where he prosecuted drug smugglers working across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Earlier this month, Curiel delayed the start of trial proceedings until November.
Almost four months after promising $1 million of his own money to veterans’ causes, Donald Trump moved to fulfill that pledge Monday evening — promising the entire sum to a single charity as he came under intense media scrutiny.
Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, organized a nationally televised fundraiser for veterans’ causes in Des Moines on Jan. 28. That night, Trump said he had raised $6 million, including the gift from his own pocket.
“Donald Trump gave $1 million,” he said then.
As recently as last week, Trump’s campaign manager had insisted that the mogul had already given that money away. But that was false: Trump had not.
In recent days, The Washington Post and other media outlets had pressed Trump and his campaign for details about how much the fundraiser had actually raised and whether Trump had given his portion.
The candidate refused to provide details. On Monday, a Post reporter used Twitter — Trump’s preferred social-media platform — to search publicly for any veterans groups that had received Trump’s money.
By Monday afternoon, The Post had found none. But it seems to have caught the candidate’s attention.
Later Monday evening, Trump called the home of James K. Kallstrom, a former FBI official who is chairman of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The charity aids families of fallen Marines and federal law enforcement officers.
Trump told Kallstrom that he would give the entire $1 million to the group, according to Kallstrom’s wife. Sue Kallstrom said she was not sure whether the money had been transferred yet. However on May 25th it was confirmed the transaction was completed.
Other big donors to Trump’s fundraiser had already made their gifts weeks before. Why had Trump waited so long?
“You have a lot of vetting to do,” Trump said Tuesday in a telephone interview conducted while he was flying to a campaign rally in Albuquerque.
For this particular donation, it would seem that little new vetting was required because Trump already knew the recipient well. The Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation had already received more than $230,000 in donations from the Donald J. Trump Foundation — a charity controlled by Trump but largely funded by others. Last year, the group gave Trump its “Commandant’s Leadership Award” at a gala in New York.
When asked Tuesday whether he had given the money this week only because reporters had been asking about it, Trump responded: “You know, you’re a nasty guy. You’re really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do.”
Trump’s call on Monday night stood in contradiction to an account given Friday by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “The money is fully spent,” Lewandowski said then. “Mr. Trump’s money is fully spent.”
On Tuesday, Trump said Lewandowski would not have been in a position to know that. “I don’t know that Corey would even know when I gave it out,” he said.
In the same interview, Trump said the fundraiser had raised about $5.5 million for veterans overall. He said he was not sure how much of it remained to be given away.
That also contrasted with the account last week from Lewandowski, who said that about $4.5 million had been raised and that Trump’s effort had fallen short of the promised $6 million because some unnamed big donors had backed out.
On Tuesday, Trump said no major contributors had reneged. “For the most part, I think they all came through,” he said. “Some of them came through very late.”
Trump also said he had never actually promised that the fundraiser had raised $6 million. “I didn’t say six,” he said.
But, in video of the event, Trump tells the crowd, “We just cracked $6 million! Right? $6 million.”
Trump was told that he did, indeed, say “$6 million.”
“Well, I don’t, I don’t have the notes. I don’t have the tape of it,” he said. “Play [the tape] for me. Because I’d like to hear it.” Before the video could be cued up, Trump had moved on.
The story of his nighttime gift seemed to highlight a unique quality of Trump: his acute sensitivity to losing face on social media. He had routinely rejected questions about the fundraiser for veterans if they were posed in person.
“Why should I give you records?” Trump said in an interview with The Post earlier this month, when he was asked about the money. “I don’t have to give you records.”
Then, on Monday, a Post reporter publicly queried multiple veterans groups on Twitter, asking whether they had received personal donations from Trump. None had.
Hours later, after 10:38 p.m. Eastern time, Trump responded on Twitter: “While under no obligation to do so, I have raised between 5 & 6 million dollars, including 1million dollars from me, for our VETERANS. Nice!”
And sometime that same evening, Trump called to make the donation to James Kallstrom’s group. Sue Kallstrom wasn’t sure what time the call was, only that it happened after she went to bed at 8 p.m.
“I guess he wants to take care of the vets,” she said. Among its other good works, the foundation provides $30,000 educational grants to the children of the fallen. “The foundation is thrilled, because the [money] is going to help a lot of people. Especially the children.”
Trump’s campaign has said the remainder of the donations would be given out by Memorial Day. Trump said he would ask his staff to send The Post a list of the groups that would receive that money, but his staff did not immediately provide it.
But it did appear that Trump’s staff was preparing to disburse more gifts. In Boston on Tuesday, the founder of the city’s annual Wounded Vet Bike Run got a call.
“For some reason, a Trump campaign worker reached out to me today and asked for our nonprofit number, and I gave it to ’em,” said Andrew Biggio, the group’s founder.
The annual motorcycle ride raises money to help veterans and their families, including giving away cars and retrofitting motorcycles for the disabled. He said the staffer did not tell him how much money to expect. “I have no idea what’s coming down the pike,” Biggio said.
In recent weeks, other veterans groups had been struggling to figure out how to ask for some of Trump’s remaining money. Trump had provided no formal way to apply.
Biggio said he had not formally applied but was pretty sure how he had come to be on Trump’s radar.
“I served in Iraq with Donald Trump’s bodyguard’s son,” he said.
Donald Trump made good on his promise to give $1 million dollars to veteran charities, four full months after he claimed he already donated the money.
While a $1 million dollar donation to veterans groups is an amazing gesture, it is hardly altruistic. The televised fundraiser only came about so he could dodge debate questions from Megyn Kelly about his past sexist comments towards women. Then Trump attempted to extort Fox News for an illegal “quid pro quo” donation of $5 million dollars to appear at their Iowa debate. Then for the next 4 months Trump lied again and again when he boasted about his charitable donation to his rallies.
On 1/28, Trump released a press release indicating that Mr. Trump made a $1 million dollar contribution at a special event in Des Moines to benefit vets.
The conservative newspaper The Weekly Standard broke the story on 2/18 that the Trump campaign was refusing to acknowledge how much money was disbursed saying, “You can do your homework and ask the veterans’ organizations.” They did and found out that only about $500,000 was distributed to veterans charities at that time.
On 2/26, the conservative pundit Stuart Varney on Fox Business News corroborated The Weekly Standard’s story with their own investigation by checking with the charities a full month after the fundraiser and found that only $650,000 of the supposed $6 million raised had been distributed to charities.
Two months after the fundraiser on 4/7, the not-very-liberal Wall Street Journal again talked to the veteran charities and found only $2.4 million was distributed.
Then on 5/20, The Washington Post followed up with the 22 veteran charities and only $3.1 million could be accounted for. Furthering the scandal, the Trump campaign confirmed that only $4.5 million and not $6 million was raised while claiming $1 million dollars donated by Trump was already given to the charities but refused to share evidence:
Did Trump make good on his promise to give from his personal funds?
“The money is fully spent. Mr. Trump’s money is fully spent,” Lewandowski said.
To whom did Trump give, and in what amounts?
“He’s not going to share that information,” Lewandowski said.
Then, to the surprise of no one, Trump insulted the reporter who caught him trying to cheat our veterans, then later at a press conference tried to turn this around on the “dishonest” media.
As a side note, this is the first time Donald Trump has given any of his personal money to a charity of any kind in over 5 years.
One night in January, Donald Trump skipped a GOP debate and instead held his own televised fundraiser for veterans. At the end of the night, Trump proclaimed it a huge success: “We just cracked $6 million, right? Six million.”
Now, Trump’s campaign says that number is incorrect.
Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said the fundraiser actually netted about $4.5 million, or 75 percent of the total that Trump announced.
Lewandowski blamed the shortfall on Trump’s own wealthy acquaintances. He said some of them had promised big donations that Trump was counting on when he said he had raised $6 million. But Lewandowski said those donors backed out and gave nothing.
“There were some individuals who he’d spoken to, who were going to write large checks, [who] for whatever reason . . . didn’t do it,” Lewandowski said in a telephone interview. “I can’t tell you who.”
Lewandowski also said he did not know whether a $1 million pledge from Trump himself was counted as part of the $4.5 million total. He said Trump has given that amount, but he declined to identify any recipients.
The comments appear to be the first acknowledgment — almost four months later — that Trump’s fundraiser had brought in less than the candidate said. Lewandowski said he did not know the exact total raised or how much of it remained unspent.
Even with the lower total, Trump’s fundraiser brought in millions of dollars for veterans’ charities. The Washington Post’s accounting, based on interviews with charities, has found at least $3.1 million in donations to veterans groups.
Trump’s fundraiser Jan. 28 was an indelible moment, a one-night showcase of the GOP front-runner’s boldness and charm.
In a single evening in Des Moines, Trump showed Fox News — the host of that night’s Trump-less debate — that he was powerful enough to spurn the Fox network.
At the same time, he showed a national audience that he could conjure a multimillion-dollar benefit out of nothing, using connections, showmanship and his own wealth.
“Donald Trump — another great builder in New York, now a politician — I can’t stand this, a politician,” Trump said, in his trademark run-on style, after he’d listed a series of gifts from other wealthy friends. “I don’t want to be called a politician. All talk, no action — I refuse to be called a politician. Donald Trump gave $1 million. Okay?”
In the days after the fundraiser, Trump repeated the $6 million figure in TV appearances and at Iowa rallies. “At that rally we raised, in one hour, $6 million. Is that good?” Trump said four days afterward at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
At first, he was very public about giving the money away. In rallies across Iowa, Trump would call representatives of local veterans groups up to the stage and present them with oversize checks.
In some cases, the money came from friends of Trump’s who sent checks directly to veterans groups. In other cases, the money was routed through Trump’s personal foundation.
For the groups that received this money — often dealing with aging veterans from the Vietnam War, along with returning troops from Iraq and Afghanistan — the money was an enormous help.
“It’s all long gone,” said James Kallstrom, a retired FBI official who is the chairman of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. In March, his group received $100,000, which Kallstrom said would go toward $30,000 educational grants for the children of Marines killed on active duty. “I believe there was a helicopter crash that had, oh God, I forget how many there were. . . . They’re all young, and they all have young children.”
But, as the race continued, the checks from the fundraiser began to come less frequently. The most recent check identified by The Post was dated March 25.
In recent weeks, Trump and his campaign repeatedly declined to give new details about how much they have given away.
“Why should I give you records?” Trump said in an interview with The Post this month. “I don’t have to give you records.”
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said Trump’s refusal to divulge how much of the money he had distributed raised questions about whether the candidate intended the fundraiser primarily as a public-relations effort for himself.
“That’s just shady. Right? No matter how you cut it, that’s just shady,” Rieckhoff said. “If he was going to make it right, a couple of weeks before Memorial Day would be a good time to do it. It behooves him, not just politically but ethically, to come forward and account for this money.”
Trump provided no official way for charities to apply for the money. Groups around the country still tried, sending letters and hitting up local veterans-for-Trump leaders.
“We haven’t heard anything,” said Judy Schaffer of Heroes to Heroes, a New Jersey-based group that sends veterans on nondenominational trips to Israel to prevent suicide and promote “spiritual healing.” Her group had received a donation from Trump’s personal foundation years before.
“We have a waiting list of over 200 veterans. Many of them have already attempted suicide,” Schaffer said this week. “And it keeps me up at night, not being able to send more people.”
Lewandowski said Trump has decided on about two dozen groups that will get the remainder of the money in the next couple of weeks. He said the groups have been vetted and had been chosen by word of mouth within the Trump campaign or from causes Trump had previously supported.
Lewandowski said Trump should not be faulted for promising $6 million in donations.
“What he said was, ‘We hope to get $6 million.’ He said this at an event where we were trying to get money. It was a best guess,” Lewandowski said. “That was his goal. His goal was to get somewhere around $6 million.”
On the night of the fundraiser, Trump named nine big donors, including himself.
Since then, The Post has found evidence from Trump’s staff, from the donors or from veterans charities that received money that seven of those nine gave money as promised. Those gifts added up to $3.78 million.
On top of that, Trump said small-dollar donors gave $670,000 over the Internet. That adds up to $4.45 million.
So, were those other two big donors among the ones who backed out?
One of them was a shopping-mall magnate from Ohio who did not respond to multiple calls, emails and messages from The Post seeking to confirm his donations. But even if that man did back out, his pledge was so small — $50,000 — that it would make little difference in a tally of millions.
The other donor had made a much bigger promise: Trump, with his vow to give $1 million.
In the past few days, The Post has interviewed 22 veterans charities that received donations as a result of Trump’s fundraiser. None of them have reported receiving personal donations from Trump.
Did Trump make good on his promise to give from his personal funds?
“The money is fully spent. Mr. Trump’s money is fully spent,” Lewandowski said.
To whom did Trump give, and in what amounts?
“He’s not going to share that information,” Lewandowski said.
Reality
Controversy still surrounds Trump’s January fundraiser for vets called “Scared of Debate Questions From Megyn Kelly.” Sorry that was a typo. The fundraiser was called “Rally For Vets” and Trump claimed it raised $6 million dollars, including $1 million of his own money.
Four months later and the Washington Post uncovered the fundraiser only netted $4.5 million and only $3.1 million has been distributed to charities. Furthermore the Trump campaign refuses to provide evidence that Trump donated his promised $1 million dollars.
This is serious stuff. There are real veterans with real physical and psychological problems in need. If Trump continues to claim he’s for vets then this is a lousy way to prove it.
Donald Trump once floated the idea of a race-based season of his hit reality television show “The Apprentice,” where teams would be divided based on the color of their skin.
Back in 2005, ahead of filming his fifth season as a host of the “The Apprentice,” Trump said he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites.”
Trump, currently the Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee, made the comments on his now-defunct radio show. His proposal was reported by Entertainment Weekly in 2005 and resurfaced by a Buzzfeed News report.
Trump, who said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the fourth season of “The Apprentice,” later added of the racialized premise: “Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”
Trump acknowledged at the time, however, that “not everybody thinks it’s a good idea.”
Trump’s idea came shortly after Omarosa Manigualt, an African American woman, became a popular contestant on the first season of “The Apprentice” in 2004. Manigault, now an avid Trump supporter, later appeared on subsequent iterations of the show, including “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
The idea — which he had also raised on Howard Stern’s show a couple months earlier, according to a 2005 Entertainment Weekly article — drew an avalanche of coverage, commentary, and question-mark headlines at the time.
Tara Dowdell, a black communications consultant who appeared on season 3 of The Apprentice had an excellent quote that sums up this entire story:
Best-case scenario, it was huge blind spot. Worst-case scenario, it showed [Trump’s] willingness to exploit race and be divisive — to do anything to promote himself. The presidency can’t be one crazy, ill-advised publicity stunt after another.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Donald Trump how he felt about a sneaky no-roll call vote in Congress to strip money from the G.I. bill and re-appropriate it elsewhere and whether we should keep the bill as it is.
Rather than answer the question outright, Trump appeared to dodge by babbling about how he loves the vets and knows so many vets, and they’re tremendous, etc, etc, etc. Cuomo then asked him straight up whether or not he supported the GI bill – and Trump said no.
CHRIS CUOMO: On the military, you raise an important issue. We tried to get your campaign and the other campaigns to hold forth on whether or not they supported the current G.I. bill. As you know, in the Congress, they did this sneaky vote in the House where there was no roll call, and they were going to cut money from the G.I. bill to allow for other expenditures for vets. The vets were very upset. They said ‘no, don’t take money from us and reallocate it. Find the savings elsewhere.’
Do you support maintaining the G.I. bill the way it is right now and even growing it instead of cutting it?
DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to be hurting our vets. Our vets have been hurt enough. We treat illegal immigrants better than we treat our vets. So I’m going to do nothing to hurt our vets. I’m going to only help the vets —
CHRIS CUOMO: So is that a yes? —
DONALD TRUMP: — unlike Hillary Clinton, that thinks the vets are getting too much. And they’re not getting too much. I’ve traveled, I’ve seen so many vets, I know so many vets now, and I have a lot of friends — I have developed great friendships among the vets. Our vets are being treated so badly —
CHRIS CUOMO: So is that a yes, I do support the current G.I. bill?
DONALD TRUMP: No. I want to bring jobs back to our country.
Reality
When asked about the specific legislation to cut and reappropriate G.I. Bill funds, Trump ignored the question and instead started playing his greatest hits. Trade deals, jobs, Hillary Clinton, babble, babble, babble. We conclude that Trump clearly had no idea what the subject was otherwise a direct and coherent answer would have been given.
As a candidate to be Commander-In-Chief it is very important to understand the legislation being put forth that would effect the well-being of the men and women under your command. This is further proof that Trump is highly unprepared for the Presidency.
Trump’s opponents and a lot of left leaningmedia outlets have jumped on him for saying “no” to supporting the popular G.I. Bill in its current form. We’ve listened to his statement multiple times and we feel his “no” response was very meek and unsure, and earlier Trump did claim he was going to do nothing to hurt the vets. Therefor we cannot make the claim that Trump hates the vets that sites like The Huffington Post made.
Their accounts, many relayed in their own words, revealed unwelcome romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form, a shrewd reliance on ambitious women, and unsettling workplace conduct, according to the interviews, as well as court records and written recollections. The interactions occurred in his offices at Trump Tower, at his homes, at construction sites and backstage at beauty pageants. They appeared to be fleeting, unimportant moments to him, but they left lasting impressions on the women who experienced them.
Rowanne Brewer Lane, Companion: Donald J. Trump had barely met her when he asked her to change out of her clothes. “He took me into a room and opened drawers and asked me to put on a swimsuit.” Trump then took Brewer Lane out to parade her in front of the rest of the party and asked the crowd if they thought she was a beautiful “Trump lady” which she was taken aback by it. It did not take long for him to solicit her view on the attractiveness of two of his previous romantic partners, Marla Maples and Ivana Trump. “He did ask me, on a scale of 1 to 10, what I thought of Marla. I thought that was very boyish of him. He asked me the same thing about Ivana. I said, obviously, she is your wife. (Trump was divorcing Ivana at the time.) A beautiful woman. What could you say but a 10? I am not going to judge your wife.”
Ivana Trump, Ex-Wife: An anecdote how, when she was his girlfriend at the time, Donald Trump defended his father Fred Trump when the elder Trump told her what she is having for dinner. Trump let her run Trump’s Castle, a major casino in Atlantic City, and the Plaza Hotel, the storied complex on Central Park South in Manhattan. She ran it well but he compensated her as a spouse, not a high-level employee, paying her an annual salary of $1 for the Trump’s Castle job, according to her tax documents.
Barbara A. Res, Executive for the Trump Organization: Donald Trump hired Ms. Res to manage the building of Trump Tower. He said: “I know you’re a woman in a man’s world. And while men tend to be better than women, a good woman is better than 10 good men.” … He thought he was really complimenting me. Fred Trump did not like the idea that Donald Trump had hired a woman for an executive position but Donald Trump defended her. However his misogyny would still be on display. Out of the blue Donald Trump evaluated the fitness of women in Marina del Rey, Calif. “They take care of their asses,” he said. Years later, after she had gained a significant amount of weight, Ms. Res endured a stinging workplace observation about her own body from Mr. Trump. “ ‘You like your candy,’ ” she recalled him telling her. “It was him reminding me that I was overweight.” Later when The New York Post feasted on his wife’s supposed satisfaction with him in bed, captured in the headline “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had,” Mr. Trump was unabashed. Trump loved it and would show the paper to everyone in the office, much to their horror. Trump also interacted with women with an unthinkable habit of making them feel small. “At Trump Tower he called me Honey Bunch.”
Louise Sunshine, Executive Vice President for the Trump Organization: Experienced similar observations from Mr. Trump when she gained weight. But she saw it as friendly encouragement, not a cruel insult. “He thought I looked much better thin,” she said. “He would remind me of how beautiful I was.”
Temple Taggart, 1997 Miss Utah: Donald Trump, while married to Marla Maples, introduced himself to her as well as other contestants in the Miss Universe Pageant with a direct kiss on the lips. “Oh my God, gross.” He then kissed her again on the lips in Trump Tower. “ ‘We’re going to have to tell them you’re 17,’ ” Ms. Taggart recalled him telling her, “because in his mind, 21 is too old. I was like, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ ”
Carrie Prejean, 2009 Miss California: Mr. Trump personally would evaluate the women contestants at rehearsal. It became clear that the point of the whole exercise was for him to divide the room between girls he personally found attractive and those he did not. Many of the girls found the exercise humiliating. Some of the girls were sobbing backstage after he left, devastated to have failed even before the competition really began to impress “The Donald.”
Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee, 1997 Miss Universe: During the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant, he sat in the audience as his teenage daughter, Ivanka, helped to host the event from onstage. “ ‘Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?’ ” Ms. Lee recalled him saying. ‘I was like, ‘Really?’ That’s just weird. She was 16. That’s creepy.”
Barbara J. Fife, former New York City Deputy Mayor: Trump told her why he was in such a hurry one day as he sat in her office at City Hall. “I have this great date tonight with a model for Victoria’s Secret,” Ms. Fife recalled him telling her. “I saw it as immature, quite honestly,” she said.
Alair A. Townsend, former New York City Deputy Mayor: “[Trump] was dismissive. It was always, “Hon,” “Dear.” Things he wouldn’t have said to a man. It was designed to make you feel small. And he did that repeatedly.”
Jill Harth, former pageant promoter: Jill Harth and her boyfriend at the time, George Houraney, worked with Mr. Trump on a beauty pageant in Atlantic City, and later accused Mr. Trump of inappropriate behavior toward Ms. Harth during their business dealings. In a 1996 deposition, Ms. Harth described their initial meeting with Mr. Trump at Trump Tower.Donald Trump stared at me throughout that meeting. He stared at me even while George was giving his presentation. … In the middle of it he says to George, “Are you sleeping with her?” Meaning me. And George looked a little shocked and he said, “Well, yeah.” And he goes, “Well, for the weekend or what?” Mr. Houraney said in a recent interview that he was shocked by Mr. Trump’s response after he made clear that he and Ms. Harth were monogamous. “He said: ‘Well, there’s always a first time. I am going after her,’ ” Mr. Houraney recalled, adding: “I thought the man was joking. I laughed. He said, ‘I am serious.’ ” By the time the three of them were having dinner at the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel the next night, Mr. Trump’s advances had turned physical, Ms. Harth said in the deposition. “Basically he name-dropped throughout that dinner, when he wasn’t groping me under the table,” she testified. “Let me just say, this was a very traumatic thing working for him.”
Alicia Machado, 1996 Miss Universe: During her time as Miss Universe she gained weight, and Donald Trump did not keep his critique of her changing body quiet and he publicly shamed her. When going to a gym to take the weight off Donald Trump surprised her by showing up with 90 media outlets to document it. Near tears Ms. Machado declined to be a part of the media circus, but Donald Trump refused her request saying, “I don’t care.” After her humiliation she spent the past years fighting anorexia and bulimia.
The article does highlight how Mr. Trump did help women and how his office stood out for its diversity. For example Alan Lapidus, an influential architect who designed the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City is quoted:
He is a lot more complicated than the cartoon character. The top people in his company were women, like Barbara Res. For any company to hire a woman as chief of construction was actually startling. I don’t know of a single other developer who had a woman in that position. The respect for women was always there. That’s why, in spite of the comments he makes now — and God knows why he says these things — when he was building his empire, the backbone was women.
Reality
The New York Times reporters said there were “themes” that emerged, such as constant commentary on the female form, exploitation of ambitious women, unwanted advances, and physical aggression.
However one of the women featured in the article, Brewer Lane, appeared on Fox and Friends to dispute the Times’ framing of her account which opened up a whole can of worms. “Actually, it was very upsetting. I was not happy to read it at all,” Brewer Lane said. “Well, because The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across. They promised several times that they would do it accurately. They told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it and honestly, and it absolutely was not.”
But when asked what the reporters got wrong, Brewer Lane said they took her quotes and “put a negative connotation on it.”
Donald Trump then took to Twitter to claim that Rowanna Brewer Lane’s disagreement with the tone of how her story was presented now discounted the rest of the article.
How quality a woman is Rowanne Brewer Lane to have exposed the @nytimes as a disgusting fraud? Thank you Rowanne.
The New York Times story is just not Rowanne Brewer Lane’s account of Trump in the 1990’s but the experience of 50 women who were interviewed for the article. If we can discount Brewer Lane’s story then that still leaves 49 women, 11 who were named, who had the same experience of misogyny from Donald Trump. Some of those women, such as Barbara Res, publicly supported the article and their portrayal in it.
Unless Donald Trump can prove that the remaining 49 subjects were also misrepresented, it is incorrect of him to declare the story was “proven false.”
This article does not cover the sexist comments made by Trump since announcing his campaign. Just a few examples include:
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is not reining in his attacks against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
When New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asked Trump if “he had been chided by any Republicans” for his Twitter war with the Democratic senator, the presumptive nominee said, “You mean Pocahontas?”
Senator Warren’s had accused Donald Trump that he is running a racist, sexist, and xenophobic campaign, Trump continues to respond with misogynist bullying. This is a logical fallacy known as ad hominem, or attack the attacker, and is about the lowest type of argument in a disagreement. It is used when a person has no real defense so instead they resort to name calling.
Trump earlier this week fired off insults on Twitter, calling the senator “Goofy Elizabeth Warren.”
In March, Trump attacked Warren for saying she was part Native American while a professor at Harvard.
Donald Trump again warned of another 9/11-like attack on the United States if refugees are continually allowed into the country.
In an interview on the National Border Patrol Council podcast “The Green Line” the presumptive Republican nominee said:
Our country has enough difficulty right now without letting the Syrians pour in.
Trump also suggested ISIS is paying for refugees’ cell phone plans.
They all have cell phones so they don’t have money, they don’t have anything, they have cell phones. Who pays their monthly charges, right? They have cell phones with the flags, the ISIS flags on them.
When asked if he thought it would take an attack similar to 9/11 for the country to “wake up about border security,” Trump agreed.
Bad things will happen; a lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe. There will be attacks by the people that are right now coming in to our country.
Trump also spoke about Hillary Clinton’s agenda for immigration reform and his own plans for border control, including his proposal to build a wall at the Southern border. The National Border Control agents’ union made its first-ever endorsement of a presidential candidate when it backed Trump in March.
The reference to Syrian refugees with ISIS phones appears to be from an article first reported by the Norwegian newspaper The Netavisen, where a few of the refugees had cell phone images with horrors of war, as well as images of flags, symbols and characters that can be linked to the terrorist group ISIS and other terrorist groups. The article was then floated on the conspiracy site Infowars and the British tabloid the Daily Mail that “hundreds” of refugees in Norway were found with photos of ISIS flags on their phones. And finally we have Donald Trump claiming “thousands.” Just like a game of whisper down the alley the reality is it was not “thousands of people” like Trump claimed.
Conveniently omitted from Donald Trump’s claim was the statements from the Norwegian officials in charge of investigating these incidents who say the images are most likely documentation of ISIS’s presence and what the individuals have witnessed, rather than a statement of support. Also the refugees had images of ISIS flags which they could use when passing through ISIS controlled areas as to avoid suspicion.
Donald Trump, who issued a December press release “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” said such a ban “hasn’t been called for yet” and it was “only a suggestion.”
It’s the latest lightning-speed evolution for the real estate tycoon as he pivots from the provocateur who upended the Republican primary to a general election candidate preparing to square off with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“We have a serious problem, and it’s a temporary ban — it hasn’t been called for yet, nobody’s done it, this is just a suggestion until we find out what’s going on,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade Wednesday.
Reality
Donald Trump isn’t toning down his hateful rhetoric at all here. In his very next sentence he is still linking all Muslims with radical Islamic terrorists.
His assertion that his proposed ban was a suggestion is a complete lie. When Trump first introduced the proposed ban back in December he explicitly said in both a speech and in a press release: “Donald J. Trump is 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.”
Pull up any video of Trump talking about a ban on all Muslims entering the United States and in absolutely zero instances does he say, before this interview, that it was ever a suggestion.
The chaos over Donald Trump’s California delegation to the national convention escalated on Wednesday after a controversial, anti-Muslim pastor said he was standing down to “take one for the team”.
Guy St Onge, who proselytizes frequently on YouTube, told the Guardian he was no longer a delegate for the presumptive Republican nominee. Onge has in the past shared social media postings appearing to advocate killing Muslims and last year claimed: “Barack Hussein Obama and his tranny wife Michelle hate the USA!”
St Onge, who is listed on the California secretary of state’s official list as one of three delegates pledged to Trump from California’s 35th congressional district, declined to say precisely when he stood down. The list was formally submitted by the Trump campaign on Monday night.
However St Onge informed the Guardian of his decision to relinquish his delegate spot hours after reporters contacted the Trump campaign asking for confirmation the controversial pastor was among a colorful list of delegates, some of whom have a controversial past.
On Tuesday, the Trump campaign was forced to distance itself from another one of their delegates, self-avowed white nationalist William Daniel Johnson, who once called for a constitutional amendment which would revoke citizenship for all non-white Americans.
It was at first unclear if either St Onge or Johnson could be formally removed from Trump’s delegate list. California’s secretary of state said on Tuesday that the Trump campaign had attempted to send a revised delegate list after news broke about Johnson’s inclusion. However, because they had missed the deadline, a spokesperson for the secretary of state said the initial list must stand.
But late Wednesday afternoon, the Trump campaign told the Guardian that an updated list of its delegates was posted on the website of the California Republican party, without William Johnson and Guy St Onge on it.
According to his voluminous social media presence, St Onge is an evangelical pastor living in Ontario, California. His numerous Facebook accounts, YouTube videos and Tumblr page feature videos of his preaching, photos of himself carrying rifles and anti-Muslim memes.
A meme shared on one of his Facebook pages reads: “Allah SUCKS/ Mohammed SUCKS/ Islam SUCKS/ Any of you Hadji’s have an issue with me saying this, PM me and I’ll gladly give you my address. You can come visit me, where I promise/ I will/ KILL YOU/ In my front yard!!”
Reached by a reporter through Facebook, St Onge replied Wednesday afternoon: “I am no longer a delegate, by my own choosing … I will take one for the team, Loyal to a fault you might say … Jesus loves you, but not the trouble you try and cause for others.”
Asked about precisely when he ceased being a delegate, St Onge replied: “I have spoken to the appropriate people . thank you, Have a great day and may God bless you …”
He subsequently posted a Facebook post about a Guardian reporter on another Facebook account, writing: “This is a reporter who started doing a story on me … who is she to call the kettle black?”The post has since been deleted.
In a later message, St Onge wrote: “I see you are not a Christian so that tells me a lot about you and who you represent!!”
Asked about a report that he had once burned a Mexican flag, St Onge responded: “No, that is not true, even if it was, they burn ours don’t they?” The pastor then messaged a reporter several links to a video of two men, one wearing a Trump T-shirt, burning a Mexican flag. “I would call these men my brothers, US Citizen brothers!!,” he wrote.
According to a biography on one of St Onge’s Facebook pages, he “was in a very bad world, full of drugs, motorcycles, gangs and cops and more” before he was reborn and baptized in September 1995. “For me my life used to be all about Sex, Drugs and Rock&Roll … Now it is God Jesus and the Holy Ghost,” he writes on Facebook.
On 27 March 2016, St Onge posted about his application to be a Trump delegate on Facebook, writing: “I JUST SIGNED UP TO BECOME A NATIONAL DELEGATE FOR DONALD TRUMP, I WILL NOT FIND OUT UNTIL March 31, 2016. WHEN THEY DECIDE …”
St Onge is the second California delegate to attempt to drop out after Johnson, a corporate attorney and prominent white nationalist from Los Angeles.
Trump’s campaign blamed Johnson’s inclusion on a “database error” and said he was no longer a delegate. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Mixed in with Bible verses and YouTube sermons, St Onge shares a wide variety of political material, including anti-same sex marriage memes, a meme featuring the Confederate flag that reads “620,000 Died for this flag they deserve to be honored”, and a “Christian for Trump” image with the attached commentary: “Not saying Trump is a very godly man, but God can use anyone even evil to bless His people which are not just the Jews any longer but even the Gentiles now, for we are all under the same God …”
Another post features a photoshopped image of Barack Obama and David Cameron kissing, with the caption: “Sodomites!!”
