Donald Trump’s son, a primary surrogate for his presidential candidacy, alluded on Thursday to the mass killing of Jewish people in Nazi Germany while laying out what he sees as a media double standard in campaign coverage.
In an interview with Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, Donald Trump Jr. made the argument that Republicans would be punished if they lied or schemed in fashions similar to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And then he decided to talk about gas chambers.
“The media has been her number one surrogate in this. Without the media, this wouldn’t even be a contest, but the media has built her up,” Trump Jr said. “They’ve let her slide on every indiscrepancy (sic), on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”
A reference to gas chambers is the type of remark that under typical campaign conventions would be met with profound rebuke and alarm. But while criticism came in quickly on Twitter, a senior member of the Republican National Committee still blasted out the interview.
Trump Jr. has gone down similar paths before. As the group RightWingWatch noted, he has “posted an image to Instagram that included “Pepe the frog,” which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a meme “constantly used by white supremacists” and “appeared on a radio show with James Edwards, host of the white supremacist radio show Political Cesspool.”
The Trump campaign has also been accused in the past of pushing anti-Semitic memes. Donald Trump himself got into trouble over the summer for tweeting an image of Clinton pasted over money with a Jewish star badge next to her.
Trump Jr. told NBC News that he was referring to corporal punishment, not the Holocaust. The reaction from some anti-Semitic Trump supporters on Twitter, however, suggests that they comfortably took it as a Holocaust reference.
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Republican nominee Donald Trump said that as President he would start racial profiling United States citizens, and should their views be “extreme” he would have them deported.
As an example, Trump used the father of Omar Mateen, the man who killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando — in spite of his status as a U.S. citizen.
“I’d throw him out,” Trump said of Seddique Mateen, according to the Washington Post. The former reality TV star said that racial and religious profiling is something our country should start practicing in the interest of protecting itself.
“But look,” said Trump, “we have — whether it’s racial profiling or politically correct, we’d better get smart. We are letting tens of thousands of people into our country. We don’t know what the hell we’re doing.”
“And frankly, the Muslims have to help us, because they see what’s going on in their community,” he said. “And if they’re not going to help us, they’re to blame also.”
Regarding Seddique Mateen, Hannity asked, “What do we do when we find somebody that has extreme views? Do we throw them the hell out?”
“I’d throw him out,” Trump said as the audience cheered. “If you look at him, I’d throw him out. You know, I looked at him. And you look, he’s smiling.”
Donald Trump is putting forth a proposal that would be a clear violation the 1st, 4th, and 14th amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as existing laws.
Mateen is a U.S. citizen, a status that is considered irrevocable except in extremely rare cases in which naturalized citizens become “denaturalized.” Typically, to be denaturalized one must get caught forging documents, falsifying important information or concealing of relevant facts, refusal to testify before Congress, membership in groups attempting to overthrow the government and dishonorable discharge from the military.
Racial profiling is the practice of targeting individuals for police or security detention based on their race or ethnicity in the belief that certain minority groups are more likely to engage in unlawful behavior.
First Donald Trump said that he wanted to block nearly all foreign Muslims from entering the United States. More recently, he decided to stop using the word “Muslim” as he called for halting immigration from countries with high rates of terrorism, although he has yet to say which countries that would include.
At a rally in Portland, Maine, on Thursday afternoon, Trump provided a lengthy explanation of why he thinks the United States needs to be skeptical of immigrants from many countries, even if they follow the legal process. Reading from notes, Trump listed nearly a dozen examples of immigrants, refugees or students who came to the United States legally — often applying for and receiving citizenship — and then plotted to kill Americans, sometimes successfully doing so. The countries that he referenced in these examples: Somalia, Morocco, Uzbekistan (he asked the crowd where it was located), Syria, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen (which he pronounced “yay-men”). Trump’s staff has yet to confirm if there are countries from which the nominee wants to limit immigration.
“We’re letting people come in from terrorist nations that shouldn’t be allowed because you can’t vet them,” Trump said. “There’s no way of vetting them. You have no idea who they are. This could be the great Trojan horse of all time.”
At another point in the rally, Trump said: “Hillary Clinton wants to have them come in by the hundreds of thousands, just remember. This has nothing to do with politics, folks. This is a whole different level. This has to do with pure, raw stupidity. Okay?”
Trump has long called for a crackdown on illegal immigration, which he has framed as a national security concern. In his announcement speech last year, Trump described illegal Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. At numerous rallies, mothers and fathers whose children have been killed by illegal immigrants have shared their heartbreaking stories. Trump has said that building a wall along the border with Mexico will not only keep out illegal immigrants but also criminals, drug traffickers and terrorists. And he has proposed deporting the millions of immigrants illegally living here, starting with those who have committed crimes.
For more than 10 months, Trump has opposed allowing any Syrian refugees into the country because they could be terrorists, and he has promised to kick out all Syrian refugees currently in the country. In December, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Last month Trump said that his position on banning Muslims has “gotten bigger,” as he’s now focusing on territories with terrorism problems. Last week Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “People don’t want me to say ‘Muslim.’ I guess I prefer not saying it, frankly, myself. So we’re talking about territories.” But he has yet to say which territories he would target.
About 13 percent of 318.9 million people living in the United States in 2014 were immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which is a massive increase from 1970, when the rate was less than 5 percent. Mexico is the most common home-nation of these immigrants, followed by India, China and the Philippines.
Within minutes of taking the stage in Maine on Thursday afternoon, Trump warned the crowd of outsiders “pouring into our country,” and he promised to build a wall along the border. He was interrupted by protesters who held up pocket-sized copies of the Constitution. The crowd booed and then chanted: “USA! USA! USA!”
As the protesters were led away, Trump resumed: “A Trump rally is the safest place in our country to be. Believe me. Believe me. Right? It is safe. But if we keep going the way it is, our whole country is becoming different.”
Trump warned the crowd that “radical Islamic terrorism” is the “most important issues facing civilization right now” and that the United States has to be more careful in allowing foreigners to visit or move here.
“We’ve just seen many, many crimes getting worse all the time, and as Maine knows — a major destination for Somali refugees. Right? Am I right?” Trump said, as the crowd affirmed what he had said. “Well, they’re all talking about it: Maine. Somali. Refugees. We admit hundreds of thousands, you admit into Maine, and to other places in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, and they’re coming from among the most dangerous territories and countries anywhere in the world — right? — a practice which has to stop. It has to stop… This is a practice that has to stop.”
To back up this point, Trump rattled through a list of cautionary examples — nearly all of which appear on a list of 26 examples released in November by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee who chairs an immigration subcommittee. Sessions has closely advised Trump for months and one of his former aides, Stephen Miller, is now a senior policy adviser to Trump and often speaks at Trump’s rallies about the dangers of immigration. In nearly each example, Trump noted that the suspect in question came to the United States legally and was granted citizenship.
“They’re the ones we know about. There are so many that we don’t know about. You’re going to have problems like you’ve never seen,” Trump said. “We don’t know where these people are. You know when the government puts them around… for the most part, very few people know where they even are. We don’t even know where they are located. I’m telling you, I’ve said it before: This could be the great Trojan horse of all time. They’re coming in. They’re coming in.”
Here are the examples Trump gave:
Somalia: Trump referenced a Washington Times article about thousands of Somali refugees resettling in Minnesota and “creating an enclave of immigrants with high unemployment that is both stressing the state’s safety net and creating a rich pool of potential recruiting targets for Islamist terror groups.” The article quotes a FBI official saying Minnesota has seen recruitment videos targeted at Somalis in their state but that authorities have been working closely with the Somali community. “It’s happening,” Trump said. “It’s happening. You see it, you read about it. You can see it.” (You can read the full article here: “Feds’ relocation of Somali refugees stresses Minn. welfare, raises terror fears.”)
Chechnya: Trump noted that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the so-called Boston bombers, came to the United States ” through the political asylum process.” Trump did not mention that the brothers were from Chechnya, but he noted that the younger brother became a naturalized U.S. citizen on Sept.11, 2012, while the older brother had an application pending. “Oh that’s wonderful, right?” Trump said. “We take them. We take them.”
Pakistan: Trump referenced the mass shooting in San Bernardino, although he didn’t mention the residency status of the married couple accused of murdering their coworkers. Syed Rizwan Farook was a U.S. citizen, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, was a permanent resident from Pakistan. At other rallies, Trump has questioned why Malik was allowed to come to the United States on a “fiancee visa.”
Morocco: Trump said that a “Moroccan national on a student visa… was arrested for plotting to blow up a university and a federal courthouse.” Some background that Trump didn’t include: Federal authorities began investigating El Mehdi Semlali Fathi, a native of Morocco who was living in Connecticut on a long-expired student visa. Fathi told a friend he wanted to use “toy planes” to bomb a university and a federal building, but he was never arrested on terrorism-related charges. Instead, Fathi was arrested on immigration-related charges, and in October 2014, he was sentenced to 24 months of imprisonment for fabricating a refugee application. He was set to be deported upon his release.
Uzbekistan: Trump said that a Uzbek refugee living in Idaho — he paused to ask the audience: “You know where that is? You know where that is, huh?” — was arrested and charged with “teaching terror recruits how to build bombs.” Trump opined: “Oh, wonderful, wonderful. I don’t want them in this country.” Fazliddin Kurbanov was arrested in 2013 and charged with teaching people to build bombs that would target public transportation. Earlier this year he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Syria: Trump said that an immigrant from Syria, who received U.S. citizenship, planned to killed solders on a military base. He was likely referring to Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, who was born in Somalia and became a naturalized U.S. citizen, settling in Ohio but traveling to Syria to allegedly train with a terrorist organization. Mohamud was indicted on terrorism charges in April 2015, with prosecutors stating that he “wanted to go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution style.”
Again, Somalia: Trump mentioned the Oregon college student who plotted to blow up a Christmas tree during a lighting ceremony, noting that he was a Somalian refugee who gained citizenship. In October 2014, Mohamed Osman Mohamud was sentenced to 30 years in prison for trying to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Afghanistan and the Philippines: Trump said an immigrant from Afghanistan who became a U.S. citizen and a legal permanent resident from the Philippines were convicted of “plotting to join Al-Quada and the Taliban in order to kill as many Americans as possible.” In February 2015, Sohiel Omar Kabir, originally of Afghanistan, and Ralph Deleon, a citizen of the Philippines who was a lawful permanent U.S. resident, were sentenced to 300 months in federal prison for participating in plots to provide material support to terrorists and kill American military members.
Iraq: Trump said an Iraqi immigrant who applied for and received U.S. citizenship was arrested for lying to federal authorities about pledging allegiance to ISIS and his travels to Syria and wanting to “kill as many Americans as possible, didn’t care how.” Bilal Abood, who worked for the U.S. military as a translator during the Iraq War, was sentenced to four years in federal prison in May for lying to the FBI about traveling to Syria and sending a tweet that pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State. Abood testified that he traveled to Syria to fight with the Free Syrian Army, which opposes the Islamic State, according to the Dallas Morning News. During the sentencing, the judge said there no evidence suggesting Abood was planning a terrorist attack.
Again, Pakistan: Trump said two immigrants from Pakistan who became citizens were sentenced to “decades-long prison terms for plotting to detonate a bomb in the middle of New York City.” In June 2015, brothers Raees Alam Qazi and Sheheryar Alam Qazi were sentenced to 35 years and 20 years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack in New York City in 2012 and assaulting two deputy U.S. marshals while in custody.
Yemen: Trump said an immigrant from Yemen was arrested for trying to join the Islamic State and illegally buying firearms to “kill as many military personnel as possible.” A version of Jeff Sessions’ list states that this happened in September 2014 but provided no links to additional information.
Under a Trump presidency, legal immigrants could have their 14th amendment rights of equal protection gutted so some hick in middle-American is able to “feel” safer.
And I stress “feel” when talking about safety and the Trump supporter because no matter how strongly they “feel” it isn’t going change reality. We have over 100 years of studies which show immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime.
“But! But! But, there was that one Mexican who killed that poor girl in that evil sanctuary city San Francisco!” is what you the Trump supporter are thinking in your head right now. But you’re wrong. While that individual incident was indeed tragic, you are so wrong and you need to know why now. You are falling into the trap of a small sample size. Every day 91 Americans are murdered, just by guns alone, so by the time you’ve finished reading this chances are some native-born American killed someone else with a gun.
So we look at data. And larger trends. And facts. Not emotions. We look at data that violent crime is on the decline, and has been for decades. The data shows violent crime has decreased 50% since 1990. I can say that not because I “feel” like it’s dropped, but because the statistics from the FBI prove it has.
Not emotions. Evidence.
So when you hear Trump in his speeches and interviews when he uses this language to make you afraid, afraid of your family, afraid of your neighbors, afraid of people you’ve never met but who have a love of this country that rivals yours, remember he his doing this because he believes you are too stupid. Trump is betting, just as he did in the Republican primaries, that you’re so dumb that you’ll take whatever he says at face value, neglect you’ll use the same logic and critical thinking that you apply to everything else in your life, and be afraid.
So think really hard about your vote. Think about what you “feel” and what you know is fact.
One of Donald Trump’s senior foreign policy advisors has apologized for sharing a blatantly anti-Semitic post on Twitter over the weekend.
Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn on Sunday responded to the claim made by Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that Russian intelligence agencies were behind the Democratic National Committee hack that exposed tens of thousands of staffers’ emails.
“The corrupt Democratic machine will do and say anything to get #NeverHillary into power. This is a new low,” Flynn tweeted, sharing a link to a tweet from user Saint Bibiana who wrote “>Cnn implicated. ‘The USSR is to blame!’ … Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.”
The user’s tweet linked to a CNN Politics clip of Mook’s comments.
Flynn, who spoke at the Republican National Convention last week, deleted the Tweet and issued an apology hours after posting it, saying it was “a mistake” and that he only meant to share the CNN video.
This is not the first time that the Trump campaign has had to answer for sharing anti-Semitic messages.
Earlier this month, Trump shared a post accusing Clinton of corruption that featured a photo of the Democratic nominee along with piles of cash and a six-pointed star that resembled the Star of David. The campaign insisted the image was not meant to be anti-Semitic and that it was actually a “plain” or “sheriff’s” star, though the user who originally posted it regularly shared other anti-Semitic messages.
Jewish journalists covering the Trump campaign have faced anti-Semitic harassment from his supporters, and he has repeatedly had to disavow the support of David Duke, an avowed anti-Semite and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
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.
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.”
In a long interview with GQ reporter Julia Ioffe, Donald Trump’s wife Melania Trump defended her husband against a comparison between him and Adolf Hitler, argued that his campaign is about uniting the country, and a profile on her family history.
In the article Ioffe also reported that Melania has a 50-year-old half-brother, Denis Cigelnjak, whom her father has never acknowledged but who a blood test proved is his biological son.
Once the article was released, Melania wrote a Facebook post which was highly critical of Ioffe, who wrote the piece. In the post Melania engaged in the same tactics as her husband, bashing the press, claiming that there were “numerous inaccuracies” in the story about her family, but didn’t go into detail.
The article published in GQ today is yet another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting. Julia Ioffe, a journalist who is looking to make a name for herself, clearly had an agenda when going after my family.
Shortly after publishing the GQ article, Ioffe was barraged with threatening phone calls, emails, and Twitter messages. She documented many of them on Twitter, noting that she’d faced this kind of harassment before only when working as a journalist in Russia.
When asked about the backlash Ioffe had gotten for uncovering her family history, Melania said:
I don’t control my fans, but I don’t agree with what they’re doing. I understand what you mean, but there are people out there who maybe went too far. She provoked them.
Julia Ioffe herself defended the piece in an interview with The Guardian earlier this month.
This is not a heavily critical article. There is nothing in it that is untrue. If this is how Trump supporters swing into action what happens when the press looks into corrupt dealings, for example, or is critical of his policies?
Nothing Melania Trump originally said in the GQ article or the Facebook post called upon Ioffe’s Jewish heritage. It was the Trump supporters who used Ioffe’s background when directing their threats towards her. What was troubling was Melania’s nonsensical response that somehow it was Ioffe herself who provoked the anti-semitic attacks.
On one hand Melania said she didn’t agree with the anti-semitic attacks against the reporter who profiled her, then on the other hand she didn’t tell her fans to stop and placed the blame squarely on the victim.
However we can empathize with Melania Trump how she might be upset how politics brings one’s family into the public sphere. For example it must be difficult for a politician to be on the receiving end of:
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.”
Reality
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.
