A resource for journalists and for shutting down your crazy uncle.
At an event in North Carolina, Trump was interrupted no fewer than 10 times by different protesters, many of whom shouted, “Black lives matter.” Trump responded by waving them off and dismissing their concerns, as boos rained down from his supporters.
“These are not people,” Trump said. “Just remember that.”
When Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition, 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”
Trump said, before referencing his book “The Art of the Deal.”
“Is there anyone who doesn’t renegotiate deals in this room?” Trump said. “Perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to.”
The presidential candidate then predicted he would not gain the support of Jews in his bid for the White House because he is independently wealthy.
“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.”
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News that such remarks “made a lot of people nervous, first because he made what many viewed as an anti-Semitic joke about how all the Jews were in business … [and] he didn’t seem to know the issues.”
Other Jewish-oriented news agencies were not happy about Trump’s remarks.
The online newspaper Times of Israel called it offensive stereotyping. “Trump on Thursday invoked a series of stereotypes about Jews that are often deemed offensive and even anti-Semitic.”
The Jewish news site Forward.com called his remarks “cringe-worthy.”
However the Anti-Defamation League at the time said: “We do not believe that it was Donald Trump’s intention to evoke anti-Semitic stereotypes.”
Trump later made more missteps with the Jewish community by calling his policy “America First” which has historical significance, and tweeted out images that came from neo-Nazi websites with anti-Semitic imagery.
Ironically, Trump has many close Jewish family members. His daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism in 2009 before marrying the real estate mogul Jared Kushner. Trump and Kushner raise their two children in an observant Jewish home.
The New York Times is angry that Donald Trump appeared to mock one of its reporters who has a physical disability, but the candidate denied Thursday that he was mimicking the reporter.
In a statement Trump said:
I have no idea who this reporter, Serge Kovalski (sic) is, what he looks like or his level of intelligence
After confronted with backlash, Trump backtracked and in his speech at a rally:
I merely mimicked what I thought would be a flustered reporter trying to get out of a statement he made long ago. If Mr. Kovaleski is handicapped, I would not know because I do not know what he looks like. If I did know, I would definitely not say anything about his appearance.
In an article The New York Times then pointed out that Serge Kovaleski covered Donald Trump extensively for many years, rebuking Trump’s claim that he does not know him. Trump responded with even more insults:
Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago — if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did.
“He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a newspaper that is rapidly going down the tubes.
(h/t CNN)
Trump claims he has the world’s greatest memory, but now he claims he doesn’t know a man who covered and interviews him for The New York Daily News for ten years.
Trump mocks Serge Kovaleski
By stating, “You should see the guy”, then making hand and arm motions to imitate him Trump obviously knows who Kovaleski is, as Trump was Kovaleski beat for many years. To debate otherwise requires a burden of proof. Trump said things about Kovaleski’s appearance and clearly mocked a reporter with disabilities.
Donald Trump sends anti-refugee tweet, “13 Syrian refugees were caught trying to get into the U.S. through the Southern Border. How many made it? WE NEED THE WALL!”
13 Syrian refugees were caught trying to get into the U.S. through the Southern Border. How many made it? WE NEED THE WALL!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2015
(h/t Los Angeles Times)
These were not illegal immigrants trying to evade authorities, instead these were legal asylum seekers following legal asylum protocol.
“To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.”
Donald Trump, the leading candidate in the Republican presidential primary, tweeted a graphic with fake statistics about murders in the United States.
The statistics are also racist and wildly inaccurate.
https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/668520614697820160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The original tweet was removed so the pic no longer shows, but on the internet nothing is forgotten.
The graphic cited the Crime Statistics Bureau in San Francisco as its source — although that does not exist and the statistics are, quite simply, made up.
In reality, the FBI shows that 82 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other white people and 15 percent of white homicide victims were killed by black people, and 91 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other black people.
So where did the image and the bogus statistics come from?
Blogger Charles Johnson, of Little Green Footballs, was unable to determine its source through a Google Image search or tineye.com — but he was able to find the earliest tweet using the graphic.
pic.twitter.com/vGXcO5xCgk
— Non Dildo’d Goyim (@CheesedBrit) November 22, 2015
The account’s avatar is a modified swastika used as the symbol of the neo-Nazi German Faith Movement, and the account profile expresses admiration for Adolf Hitler: “A detester of any kind of sick perverted dildo waving marxism and liberalism,we Should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little moustache.”
The image was posted on the conservative Sexy Patriot account shortly before Trump shared it.
There’s no indication Trump was aware the graphic seems to have originated with a neo-Nazi, but a quick Google search should have revealed the statistics as inaccurate — and its racist suggestions are plainly obvious.
Trump instructed security to eject a Black Lives Matter protester from a campaign event in Birmingham, Alabama.
“Get him the hell out of here, will you please?” Trump asked. “Get him out of here. Throw him out!”
The protester was shoved by the police out of the venue and heckled by Trump supporters, who shouted, “Get the fuck out of here, man,” and “Tase him!”
Following the altercation, Trump went on Fox News and said:
Maybe [the protester] should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.
(h/t CNN)
Comments like these add to the growing evidence that Donald Trump supports and condones violence against people with different ideas.
A black protester at Trump's rally today in Alabama was shoved, tackled, punched & kicked: https://t.co/Aq0wuaAtax pic.twitter.com/cTRDMtjuBl
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) November 21, 2015
At a campaign rally in Birmingham, AL, Donald Trump was interrupted by a Black Lives Matter protester. Trump then told event security to ‘get him the hell out of here’ and then related to an incident earlier this week involving an obese man who heckled Trump at a Massachusetts rally.
Media
Links
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/donald-trump-fayetteville/473169/
While on the topic of a national database for Muslims and surveillance of Mosques in a speech at a rally at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex in Birmingham, Ala., Mr. Trump made the following claim that Muslims celebrated on rooftops in New Jersey on 9/11/01.
“Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. So something’s going on. We’ve got to find out what it is.”
Irfan Khawaja, assistant professor of philosophy at Felician University in Lodi, spent years researching reports of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey.
After extensive study and face-to-face interviews, Khawaja concluded there was no evidence of large-scale celebrations by Muslim in New Jersey on Sept. 11. But, he did find some witnesses to a small gathering of teenagers in Paterson that he said may have been the root of some of the rumors.
To single out a single religion for surveillance goes to a dark place reserved for Nazis and is a direct contradiction to the free exercise of religion protected under the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
What is clear is that there were no widespread televised celebrations in New Jersey on 9/11. In fact, what Trump described would have been big news, and the reporters at the Daily News, Star-Ledger and elsewhere who tried and failed to track down rumors of 9/11 celebrations could have just turned on the TV to get their story.
After multiple news sources, such as the Star-Ledger and the New York Daily News, reviewed their archives which uncovered no evidence this was ever a televised event, they challenged him on his statements asking for a burden of proof. In response, Donald Trump tweeted out the following link to a Washington Post article and demanded an apology.
Via @washingtonpost 9/18/01. I want an apology! Many people have tweeted that I am right! https://t.co/CpsMxs54qv pic.twitter.com/wrDEhXJlvR
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2015
However what Donald Trump didn’t read from the Washington Post article was it very clearly reporting on the rumors of celebrations and not reporting on actual celebrations.
The Washington Post Fact Checker talked to both reporters on the Post story cited by Trump, and neither could recall if the allegations about the tailgate-style celebration were verified. “I specifically visited the Jersey City building and neighborhood where the celebrations were purported to have happened,” said Fredrick Kunkle, one of the Post reporters on that story. “But I could never verify that report.”
Atlantic Ave in Queens is the site of the Dawood Mosque. There is no mention in any major news site about celebrations occurring here after 9/11, only reports of people spitting and cursing at members.
New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer Jr. wrote in that as disturbing as the accounts were, no one found evidence to support them.
“We followed up on that report instantly because of its implications if true,” Farmer wrote. “The word came back quickly from Jersey City, later from Paterson. False report. Never happened.”
A Washington Post story said that Jersey City police detained “a number of people” who were “allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding a tailgate-style party” in Jersey City. That allegation was unattributed and unverified as explained above. Even if it did happen, and there is no evidence of it, the celebrating was not on TV and did not involve “thousands and thousands of people.”
On September 11th, a report circulated on some radio stations and Internet sites that Muslims in Paterson had demonstrated in celebration. Paterson officials promptly issued a statement denying the report, and Muslim leaders insist it was pure fabrication.
The source was one person, a then-high school senior named Emily Acevedo, who was interviewed in an MTV documentary that aired on September 17, 2001 as saying she had seen a group of kids acting up in front of the Paterson courthouse, banging on trash cans and shouting. She does not say they were Middle Eastern or Arab. Her recollections in the documentary are intercut with comments from others, including a reporter on a newscast, saying nothing happened.
MTV News interviewed Acevedo 14 years later and she said what she “saw that night [was] not anything any different than would’ve happened on any other summer night, on any other day where school was let out early.” So this demonstrates once again there is no evidence of mass demonstrations. At best, there were only some kids acting up–who may or may not have been Arab.
Donald Trump tweeted a video of radio host Curtis Silwa making the claim that there were people celebrating and cheering when they heard the World Trade Center had dropped.
Curtis Sliwa – doing tv commentary on 9/13/2001. Good job Curtis. Please send your apologies to @realDonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/g07VZmNmAW
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2015
But Silwa was just repeating the same rumors. As the Newark Star-Ledger put it in an article on Sept. 18, 2001, “rumors of rooftop celebrations of the attack by Muslims here proved unfounded.”
When Silwa was questioned for his repeating of debunked evidence, he offered no apology, and for his defense he presented the exact same debunked evidence of teenagers playing in Paterson, New Jersey.
No apology, @realDonaldTrump. Callers to @curtisandkuby on 9-11 said they saw 12 teens celebrating in Paterson.https://t.co/6h6VNIZZMG
— Curtis and Kuby (@curtisandkuby) December 1, 2015
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani did say in an interview on CNN’s New Day on December 1, 2015.
“The police department set up a unit, and we kept track of it, for about 3 or 4 weeks. And we did have some attacks, some celebrating. This is true. We did have some pockets of celebration. Umm, some in Queens and some in Brooklyn.”
But what Trump supporters neglect is the very next sentence Giuliani disputed Trump’s statement as an exaggeration of an estimated “10, 12, 30, 40,” people, not thousands. Giuliani continued to say, “I heard reports of such things in New Jersey, in New York,” he said. “I didn’t see it.”
As evidence of pockets of celebration Giuliani cited a report of a Muslim candy store owner who was beaten up for dancing, but turned out it was an unrelated hate crime. A Muslim candy store owner was standing in his store and was sucker punched by teenagers. No reports of dancing or celebrating.
When journalists pressed Giuliani to explain himself, his people reportedly told the news station that Giuliani was, in fact, referring to a different incident.
It is true The Trump campaign posted snippets of video clips from a local CBS New York City newscast at the time that reported on the arrest of “eight men”–not “thousands and thousands”– who were reported by neighbors as having celebrated the attack.
But while the newscast quotes an investigator as allegedly saying these men knew about the attack in advance, it is unclear if any charges were ever brought–or if the claims of celebrations were ever proven. As New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer said, investigators looked into many such reports–and found them to be groundless.
CBS News looked into the claim themselves and reported that “the full television news report never showed any footage of New Jersey residents celebrating on the roof. And the anchor Pablo Guzmán said only that a source reported ‘cheering’ and that police were called to a building in Jersey City to find ‘eight men celebrating’ — far fewer than the thousands Trump claimed to see.”
So this appears to be yet another unconfirmed report.
Around the world in Muslim countries overseas there were some reports of celebrations, but nothing involving the populations of New York and New Jersey, as we detailed above.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/donald-trump-syrian-muslims-surveillance.html?_r=0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishment_Clause
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/668867262456156160
GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump believes that the war on terror will require unprecedented surveillance of America’s Muslims.
“We’re going to have to do thing that we never did before,” he said during a Yahoo interview.
“Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said.
“Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy,” he added. “We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Trump would not rule out warrant-less searches in his plans for increased surveillance of the nation’s Muslims, Yahoo reported Thursday.
He also remained open toward registering U.S. Muslims in a database or giving them special identification identifying their faith, the news outlet added.
“We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump continued. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Trump additionally floated former New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly for a position in his potential presidential administration.
“Ray’s a great guy,” he said of the former NYPD chief. “Ray did a fab job as commissioner, and sure, Ray would be somebody I’d certainly consider.”
Kelly notably spearheaded the NYPD’s controversial surveillance program of New York City’s Muslim population following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The Associated Press reported in November 2011 that the NYPD built extensive databases detailing life in Islamic communities.
The department monitored grocery sales, social life and even worship among New York’s Muslims, the AP added.
Trump has repeatedly called for increased surveillance of Islamic mosques following last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
“You’re going to have to watch and study the mosques, because a lot of talk is going on in the mosques,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” early Monday.
“And from what I heard, in the old days — meaning a while ago — we had a great surveillance going on in and around the mosques of New York City,” the outspoken billionaire added.
Trump then said that the U.S. would have “absolutely no choice” besides shutting down mosques when “some bad things happen.”
More than 100 people died during a series of coordinated bombings and shootings across Paris last Friday night and more than 300 more were injured. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has since claimed responsibility for those attacks.
(h/t The Hill)
Trump’s plan is inconsistent with the principles of justice and opposite to the principles of the U.S. Constitution and is quite frankly, scary. It draws a direct comparison between Trump’s plan to identify and tag a people of an entire ethnic group and belief system with Nazi Germany’s plan to identify and tag an entire ethnic group and belief system.
Donald Trump later tweeted that it was not his idea to build a database of American Muslims.
I didn't suggest a database-a reporter did. We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2015
However that was a total and complete lie. Donald Trump just finished talking about how security is going to rule, we’re going to have to do unthinkable things, and how he would hire the guy who created a database on New York Muslims for a national position.
Yahoo News was able to draw a very straight line and asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion, to which Trump responded with “We’re going to have to,” and “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
The next day, an MSNBC reporter asked Trump, “Should there be a database or system that tracks Muslims in this country?” Trump responded that “There should be a lot of systems. Beyond databases. I mean, we should have a lot of systems.”
The same day, an NBC reporter also repeatedly asked Trump what the difference is between a registry for Muslims and the registry for Jews under Nazi Germany, to which Trump only replied, “You tell me.”
Fox News then asked him about his position on a Muslim registry. “Let’s hear it directly from you,” said host Kimberly Guilfoyle. “Would President Donald Trump support a full Muslim database?” Trump said, “Basically the suggestion was made and (it’s) certainly something we should start thinking about.”
(h/t Yahoo News)
As he often does at rallies, Trump asked the crowd what should happen to Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who abandoned his post in Afghanistan in 2009, was held hostage and then rescued. Trump called Bergdahl “a dirty, rotten traitor.”
“What do we do with Sgt. Bergdahl, 50 years ago?” Trump asked, calling on an older man sitting near the front who stood and shaped his hand like a gun. “That’s right. Boom. Boom!… Boom, he’s gone. He’s gone!”
While the case is very complex it is unpresidential to dumb it down to , “man deserted, me execute.” For example Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was suffering from a mental illness and the military was already well aware of his condition when they deployed him.
Sgt. Bergdahl expected to face court-martial at Ft. Bragg, N.C., in August.
https://bergdahldocket.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/rcm2070620board20conclusions.pdf
