Trump again pounded the fear drum and lied about the number of refugees the United States is accepting from war-torn Syria.
Our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria. I mean, think of it. 250,000 people. And we all have heart. And we all want people taken care of and all of that. But with the problems our country has, to take in 250,000 people — some of whom are going to have problems, big problems.
Reality
Taking in refugees escaping war is one of the single best things a humanitarian or Christian can do.
A 200,000 figure is an announcement in September by Secretary of State John Kerry that the United States was prepared to boost the number of total refugees accepted from around the world in fiscal 2016, from 70,000 to 85,000. Then, in 2017, Kerry said that 100,000 would be accepted.
That adds up to 185,000 over two years. But this would be the total number of refugees, not the number of refugees from Syria. As for Syria, Obama has only directed the United States to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year.
Donald Trump risked accusations of unchivalrous behavior at the Republican presidential debate Tuesday, asking his fellow candidates why former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina kept “interrupting everybody.”
It all began when the real estate bigwig answered a question on foreign policy, saying he had a good personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I got to know him very well because we were both on 60 Minutes,” he said. “If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, 100%.”
Fiorina responded with a shot at the front runner’s foreign policy chops, saying she had also met the Russian leader, “not in a green room for a show, but in a private meeting.”
Apparently stung, Trump cut in as Fiorina competed with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul for time on a foreign policy answer. “Why does she keep interrupting everybody?” he said, to nervous laughter and some boos from the audience.
Trump jumped into a fray that he wasn’t even a part of to make an observation that could be considered sexists and misogynist. Fiorina wasn’t the only one interrupting but yet he singled her out for criticism.
Donald Trump defended his vision for immigration policy at the November 10th GOP debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by alluding to a plan implemented by President Dwight Eisenhower’s that supposedly deported more than a million illegal immigrants during the 1950s.
Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him. Moved a 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. They came back. Moved them again beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back.
Trump did not mention the disparaging name of the program, which was called “Operation Wetback.” Under the program, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service removed undocumented Mexican immigrants from the Southwest and sent them back to Mexico.
The operation began in Texas in 1954 and was a “quasi-military operation of search and seizure of all unauthorized immigrants,” according to the Texas State Historical Association. The association, however, says it’s difficult to estimate how many people were actually forced to leave the country under the operation.
At the time, the government said it had deported as many as 1.3 million illegal immigrants, but analysts have said this number is exaggerated and some have said the total number of people deported was a gradual result of other programs.
It is believed, however, that Eisenhower’s operation was the opposite of humane. A story in the Washington Post says that Mexicans were dumped in hot, obscure destinations in Mexico “with few possessions and no way of getting home,” in order to discourage them from returning to the U.S.
As we pointed out in our policy review of Trump’s Immigration Reform, mass deportations would involve rounding up every undocumented person and forcibly removing them from the country. What Trump is advocating here, the forced removal of a portion of a population with the same national heritage from an area, already has a name, it’s called “ethnic cleansing” and it is not seen as a positive and moral thing. On top of the horrific crimes against humanity being proposed, what Trump also fails to mention here is the cost. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told lawmakers that it costs about $12,500 to deport one immigrant from the United States. Multiply that by 11.3 million, and you get $141.3 billion. Not great for the deficit, smaller government, or freedoms.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday night retweeted — and promptly deleted — a collage attacking his GOP primary rival Jeb Bush that featured a swastika.
The tweet, which Trump manually reposted, was quickly circulated by various Twitter users and reporters, who took screenshots of the image and reposted them.
In addition to a swastika, the collage also used Hispanic stereotypes to promote an anti-immigration reform agenda. The campaign said Wednesday morning that Trump did not realize the image included offensive imagery.
“This was retweeted by Mr. Trump like hundreds of others. He did not see the accompanying image and the retweet has since been deleted,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an e-mail.
Last month Trump’s account tweeted a comment disparaging Iowa voters who support his rival Ben Carson, insinuating they lacked intelligence. In July, Trump’s account tweeted a graphic that inadvertently used images of Nazi soldiers. In both instances, Trump said that an intern had committed the error.
Harvard economics major Joseph Choe addressed Donald Trump during a question and answer session, asking the candidate about statements he had made over the summer in which he asserted that South Korea takes advantage of the United States.
Before Choe, an Asian-American, could finish his question, Trump interrupted the man asking, “Are you from South Korea?”
“I’m not. I was born in Texas, raised in Colorado,” Choe responded.
The GOP presidential candidate shrugged as awkward laughter from the audience escalated into full-blown cheering for Choe.
“No matter where I’m from, I like to get my facts straight, and I wanted to tell you that that’s not true. South Korea paid $861 million,” Choe said before Trump cut him off again.
Reality
Trump’s question represents an all too common experience for Asian-Americans, who researchers say are stereotyped as the “perpetual foreigners.”
“[E]thnic minorities, especially Asian Americans and Latino/as, are often asked … questions like, ‘No, where are you really from?’ or ‘I meant, where are you originally from?’” a San Diego State University study explained. The implicit message, the study said, is that “they do not share the American identity or have in-group status.”
Or perhaps in this case, the right to question Donald Trump.
Just for the record, Trump is also wrong about South Korea not paying anything toward the costs of U.S. military support.
After Donald Trump allows a supporter to repeat the lie that President Obama is a Muslim, he faced a round of criticism and questions about why he didn’t correct the supporter.
Then the host of NBC’s Meet the Press asks Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson if it would be okay to have a Muslim president and Carson said, “I absolutely would not agree with that.”
This prompted Hillary Clinton to tweet, “Can a Muslim be President of the United States of America? In a word: Yes. Now let’s move on.”
Then Trump responds with a tweet of his own. “Just remember, the birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. She was all in!”
Just remember, the birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. She was all in!
First of all, President Obama was born in Hawaii. Shut up.
The first idea that Barack Obama was not a naturally born citizen can actually be traced back to 2004 with the loony racist ravings of Judah Benjamin and Andy Martin. But the origins of the birther conspiracy theory for the 2008 presidential cycle did indeed start with supporters of Hillary Clinton, but there is no evidence that it came from Clinton directly. Most of the noise from the idiot birther conspiracy theorists came after Jun 13, 2008, days after Clinton ended her campaign on June 7, 2008.
While it is true there was some hand from Clinton supporters, the idea that she started it or was “all in” as Trump claimed, is pure fiction.
At a town hall in New Hampshire, a man stood up and asked the billionaire businessman this question:
“We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American. We have training camps growing when they want to kill us. My question: When can we get rid of them?”
Trump, who had even interrupted the man to say, “We need this question,” didn’t knock down the premise of his question at the end. Here’s how he responded:
“We are going to be looking at a lot of different things. And a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We are going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”
Compare Trump’s handling of the situation to that of John McCain in 2008 and it is clear his failure to allow conspiracy theories to persist shows a lack of being Presidential.
A group of students at Iowa State called Students Against Bigotry staged a protest in the parking lot of the campus’ Jack Trice Stadium. They were confronted by a group of Trump supporters who hurled racial epithets and insults, and one woman reached out and tore a student’s signs to pieces.
