Donald Trump has hit back at criticism from Britain’s leaders by describing himself in an interview with Piers Morgan as “not stupid” and a “unifier.”
The presumptive Republican nominee made the comments to Good Morning Britain, the breakfast show of NBC News’ U.K. partner ITV.
He was asked about comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the U.K.’s Conservative Party, who said that Trump’s suggestion Muslims should be barred from the United States was “divisive, stupid and wrong.”
Trump told Good Morning Britain that “it looks like we’re not going to have a very good relationship,” if he were to win the presidential election in November.
“Number one, I’m not stupid, OK? I can tell you that right now — just the opposite,” he told Morgan, the former CNN talk-show host. “Number two, in terms of divisive, I don’t think I’m a divisive person. I’m a unifier, unlike our president now I’m a unifier.”
Trump has also been condemned by left-of-center British politicians, including new London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Khan — a Muslim member of the U.K.’s opposition Labour Party — said Trump’s comments on Islam were “ignorant,” adding that he hopes the Republican loses the election.
“When he won I wished him well — now, I don’t care about him,” Trump told Good Morning Britain. “Let’s see how he does, I mean let’s see if he’s a good mayor.”
Trump said Khan was “very rude,” and added: “Tell him I will remember those statements, they’re very nasty statements.”
Khan “doesn’t know me, never met me, doesn’t know what I’m all about,” the real-estate mogul said.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates questioned Donald Trump’s foreign policy positions on Sunday, saying the presumptive Republican presidential nominee seems unwilling to accept advice from others and thinks he “has all the answers.”
“He seems to think that he has all the answers and that he doesn’t need any advice from staff or anybody else,” Gates said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And that he knows more about these things than anybody else and doesn’t really feel the need to surround himself with informed advisers.”
Gates, who served as Defense secretary from 2006 to 2011 under former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, specifically questioned Trump’s relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and comments the real estate mogul has made about China.
“I think there are some contradictions. You can’t have a trade war with China and then turn around and ask them to help you on North Korea. … I have no idea what his policy would be in terms of dealing with [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria]. I worry a little bit about his admiration for Vladimir Putin.”
Gates also said it’s unlikely he would serve Trump if asked.
“I learned a long time ago never to say never, but let’s just say that would be inconceivable to me. Before the election, I will be 73, and let’s just say I’ve stopped working on my resume.”
Trump responded saying he’s “not a big fan” of Mr. Gates and that he “knows nothing about me.”
“Look at where our country is with years of him being involved,” Mr. Trump said of the former security adviser on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday. “We are a mess, number one. I know he has a great reputation and all of that. All of these guys have a great reputation. They have been doing this stuff for 15 years. Look where our country is, OK? We need a new group with better thinking.”
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.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is seeking to build out his policy proposals as he pivots from campaigning for his party’s nomination to a likely general election matchup with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Among those he has asked for help is U.S. Republican Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, one of the country’s most ardent oil and gas drilling advocates and climate change skeptics. North Dakota has been at the forefront of the U.S. shale oil and gas boom.
Trump’s team asked Cramer, who has endorsed Trump, to write a white paper, or detailed report, on his energy policy ideas, according to Cramer and sources familiar with the matter.
Cramer said in an interview that his white paper would emphasize the dangers of foreign ownership of U.S. energy assets, as well as what he characterized as burdensome taxes and over-regulation. Trump will have an opportunity to float some of the ideas at an energy summit in Bismarck, North Dakota on May 26, Cramer said.
The senator was also among a group of Trump advisers who recently met with lawmakers from Western energy states, who hope Trump will open more federal land for drilling, a lawmaker who took part in the meeting said.
A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign did not comment.
Environmental groups, and Clinton’s campaign, quickly attacked Trump for tapping Cramer.
“Kevin Cramer has consistently backed reckless and dangerous schemes to put the profits of fossil fuel executives before the health of the public, so he and Trump are a match made in polluter heaven,” Sierra Club Legislative Director Melinda Pierce said in an emailed statement.
The Clinton campaign also criticized the move.
“Donald Trump’s choice of outspoken climate (change) denier Kevin Cramer to advise him on energy policy is just the latest piece of evidence that letting him get near the White House would put our children’s health and futures at risk,” said campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson.
Trump has been light on the details of his energy policy, though he recently told supporters in West Virginia that the coal industry would thrive if he were president. He has also claimed global warming is a concept “created by and for the Chinese” to hurt U.S. business.
Clinton, meanwhile, has advocated shifting the country to 50 percent clean energy by 2030, promised heavy regulation of fracking, and said her prospective administration would put coal companies “out of business.”
Reality
Climate change is real. It his happening. Humans are part of it. Fact.
If Donald Trump claims he is going to hire the best and brightest, why is hiring a man who is not a scientist but yet feels his opinion is stronger than a scientific consensus? To highlight the disconnect from facts let’s take a detailed look at Kevin Cramer’s claims during a recent radio show:
Kevin Cramer rejects the science that CO2 is a pollutant and a factor in global warming.
There is nothing in the scientific literature that can back up Kevin Cramer’s claim. On the contrary there is overwhelming scientific evidence that carbon dioxide [CO2] is a pollutant.
For anyone who disagrees with the empirical evidence that CO2 is a pollutant ask yourself; Would you ever think it is safe to breath in the exhaust from your car for an extended period of time? (Prius and Tesla owners pretend you have a Chevy.) You absolutely wouldn’t because tragically hundreds of people die each year from carbon monoxide [CO] poisoning. Along with carbon monoxide, cars release carbon dioxide [CO2], hydrocarbons [HC], nitrogen oxides [NOx], and other particulates which are all pollutants, contribute to climate change, and are harmful to your health.
Science has been aware that carbon in the atmosphere will retains heat for over 150 years. The year was 1859 to be exact, and it was scientist John Tyndall who made the discovery that carbon trapped heat. Then in 1896 Svante Arrhenius calculated that, based on this simple principle of physics, higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would raise global temperatures. These discoveries are the cornerstones of climate science and in 150 years have yet to be disputed and instead continues to be confirmed by observation.
To explain further, the science, in short, says the following. CO2 lets through short wave light, the kind that passes through our atmosphere, but traps long wave radiation, the kind that is reflected and travels back into space. This experiment can be done in a laboratory, and should you have the time you could see it for yourself. The site at this link has compiled a list of just a handful of the published scientific papers of laboratory measurements of CO2 absorption properties, ranging from 1861 all the way up to 2008. Knowing this evidence, scientist reached a consensus a long time ago that CO2 is indeed a contributor to global warming.
Just to reiterate here, Kevin Cramer’s acceptance of science predates the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War, and the First Transcontinental Railroad. This is the equivalent trying to attack a state-of-the-art military drone with a Civil War era musket.
University of East Anglia Director Phil Jones admitted to falsifying temperature data
What Kevin Cramer is referencing here is the Climategate controversy, or more accurately, the manufactured controversy by climate deniers over leaked emails from scientists that turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. No really. There was 8 independent investigations into the allegations by the climate deniers and all 8 investigations found exactly 0 instances of fraud or falsification of records:
Kevin Cramer is simply repeating a long debunked conspiracy theory.
Temperature data collected by the University of East Anglia showed a downward trend
What Kevin Cramer is referring to is an email from University of East Anglia Director Phil Jones during the failed Climategate controversy where Jones mentions a “trick” to modify their temperature data.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Looks damning doesn’t it? Of course it does. That’s why those who latched onto the Climategate controversy use it as exhibit A as their evidence. The problem here however is that their evidence was not the entire comment and instead was deceitfully taken out of context.
It turned out that Director Phil Jones was speaking about statistical proxies and a well-known phenomenon called the divergence problem. There is nothing controversial here at all. A scientist talking to other scientist about well-known and well-understood observations. You may ask why are the scientists modifying the data in the first place? Seems strange doesn’t it? No it doesn’t. If you’ve taken a class in Statistics you would learn that raw data requires normalization and standardization to prepare that data for modeling.
If you would like more detail, here is a wonderful video by an actual scientist explaining why climate deniers are wrong here.
In Conclusion
So the conclusion here is that Kevin Cramer is being dishonest as he failed to state a single fact. Either he is inept by only , he is lying, or he is willfully ignoring the overwhelming scientific evidence.
Here’s the thing about science, you don’t get to pick and choose what scientific facts you agree and disagree with based off of your own personal feelings.
For example, it is impossible to deny the scientific fact of gravity. You can read gravity-denalist articles all you want and believe in your heart-of-hearts that gravity is a conspiracy of gravity scientists. This will not change the fact that if you step off of a tall building you will surely fall to your own death. This is because the method that proves the scientific fact of man-made global climate change is the exact same method that proves the scientific fact of gravity.
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.
Donald Trump declared Monday the U.S. never has to default on debt “because you print the money,” while trying to clarify his strategy for managing the national debt.
Trump insisted that he never said the U.S. should default or attempt to renegotiate with creditors, as had been reported. Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day”:
People said I want to go and buy debt and default on debt, and I mean, these people are crazy. This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK?
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee explained he would center his approach on debt buybacks if and when interest rates go up.
I said if we can buy back government debt at a discount, in other words, if interest rates go up and we can buy bonds back at a discount — if we are liquid enough as a country, we should do that. In other words, we can buy back debt at a discount.
He also repeated his claim that he is “the king of debt.”
I understand debt better than probably anybody. I know how to deal with debt very well. I love debt — but you know, debt is tricky and it’s dangerous, and you have to be careful and you have to know what you’re doing.
Trump lied. In an interview with CNBC on 5/6/16 that we cataloged here along with video, Trump was asked if the U.S. needs to pay its debt in full or if it could negotiate a partial repayment, Trump said:
I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.
Also during his CNBC interview, Trump had said that interest rates should be kept low — contradicting his remarks on CNN Monday — because a rate jump could trigger a catastrophic increase the cost of borrowing.
We’re paying a very low interest rate. What happens if that interest rate goes up 2, 3, 4 points? We don’t have a country.
Furthermore, whether through debt buyback or restructuring, neither of Trump’s debt-reduction proposals from the past week square with his party’s core approach on the issue — deep spending cuts and entitlement program reform.
The Republican Party’s official platform argues the U.S.’s looming “debt explosion” should be averted through “immediate reductions in federal spending, as a down payment on the much larger task of long-range fiscal control.”
These cuts “must be accompanied by major structural reforms,” according to the platform, and pointing to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, the GOP argues that “we must restructure the twentieth century entitlement state.”
In an interview on CNBC, Donald Trump broke with tired clichés about the evils of federal debt accumulation. “I am the king of debt,” he said. “I love debt. I love playing with it.”
But he replaced fearmongering about debt with an even more alarming notion — a bankruptcy of the United States federal government that would incinerate the world economy.
“I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal,” Trump said. “And if the economy was good, it was good. So therefore, you can’t lose.”
With his statement, Trump not only revealed a dangerous ignorance about the operation of the national monetary system and the global economic order, but also offered a brilliant case study in the profound risks of attempting to apply the logic of a private business enterprise to the task of running the United States of America.
Trump’s business logic makes sense
Trump is a businessman, and in terms of thinking like a businessman his idea makes sense.
The interest rate that investors currently charge the United States in order to borrow money is very low. A smart business strategy under those circumstances would be to borrow a bunch of money and undertake a bunch of big investment projects that are somewhat risky but judged to possibly have a huge payoff.
You now have two possible scenarios.
In one scenario, the investments work out and you make a ton of money. In that case, you can easily pay back the loan and everyone wins.
In another scenario, the investments don’t work out and you don’t make much money. In that case, you objectively can’t pay back the loan. You either work out a deal with the people you owe money to in which they accept less than 100 percent of what you owe them (this is called a “haircut”) or else you go to bankruptcy court and a judge will force them to accept less than 100 percent.
This is how businesspeople think — especially those who work in capital-intensive industries like real estate. And for good reason. This is the right way to run a real estate company.
Applying this idea to the United States would destroy the economy
The United States of America, however, is not a real estate development company. If a real estate company defaults on its debts and its creditors lose money, that’s their problem. If a bank fails as a result, then it’s the FDIC’s responsibility to clean it up.
The government doesn’t work like that. Right now, people and companies all around the world treat US government bonds as the least risky financial asset in the universe. If the government defaults and banks fail as a result, the government needs to clean up the mess. And if risk-free federal bonds turn out to be risky, then every other financial assetbecomes riskier. The interest rate charged on state and local government debt, on corporate debt, and on home loans will spike. Savings will evaporate, and liquidity will vanish as everyone tries to hold on to their cash until they can figure out what’s going on.
Every assessment of risk in the financial system is based on the idea that the least risky thing is lending money to the federal government. If that turns out to be much riskier than previously thought, then everything else becomes much riskier too. Business investment will collapse, state and local finances will be crushed, and shockwaves will emanate to a whole range of foreign countries that borrow dollars.
Remember 2008, when the markets went from thinking housing debt was low-risk to thinking it was high-risk, and a global financial crisis was the result? This would be like that, but much worse — US government debt is the very foundation of low-risk investments.
What’s especially troubling about Trump’s proposal is that there is genuinely no conceivable circumstance under which this kind of default would be necessary. The debt of the federal government consists entirely of obligations to pay US dollars to various individuals and institutions. US dollars are, conveniently, something the US government can create instantly and in infinite quantities at any time.
Of course, it might be undesirable to finance debts by printing money rather than raising taxes or cutting spending. In particular, that kind of money printing could lead to inflation, and even though inflation is very low right now there’s no guarantee that it will always be low.
But a little bit of inflation is always going to be strictly preferable to destroying the whole American economy, especially because a debt default would cause a crash in the value of the dollar and spark inflation anyway.
Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about
This is the second time this week that Trump has revealed a profound ignorance of an issue related to government debts.
The early instance in which he kept proposing that Puerto Rico declare bankruptcy even though doing so is illegal was on a question that’s very important to Puerto Ricans but not so important to everyone else. It is, however, important to pay attention to how presidential candidates approach issues across the board — and what we saw with Puerto Rico is that Trump approached the issue by simplistically applying business logic without bothering to check whether it applies to the actual situation.
Now in the CNBC interview he’s done the exact same thing on a matter of more consequence —not the debts of Puerto Rico but the debts of the United States of America. It’s understandable that a real estate developer might assume that what works in real estate would work in economic policy, but it’s not true. And Trump hasn’t bothered to check or ask anyone about it.
What Donald Trump is proposing to pay off the national debt (which is money that we are obligated to pay creditors and for services) is to borrow large sums of money at a lower rate. In other words robbing Peter to pay Paul. Should the economy be healthy then we can pay back that borrowed money no problem. However should the economy crash, and the United States is unable to meet the legal obligation of debt repayment (‘defaulting‘) then Trump proposed to renegotiate that new debt at a lower rate.
While Trump did not say the word ‘default’ he explained the exact definition of the word default in his proposal.
This raised eyebrows by suggesting an unorthodox approach towards cutting the national debt… not paying it then renegotiate terms. Such a renegotiation risks creating financial turmoil because U.S. Treasuries are considered the safest assets on the planet and a major benchmark for valuing other securities. Calling into question their safety could cause borrowing rates to rise and create confusion in the markets.
Confusion in the markets is a very bad thing. Wall Street and businesses need to know what the rules are in order to subvert play them.
Facing a prospective tab of more than $1 billion to finance a general-election run for the White House, Donald Trump reversed course Wednesday and said he would actively raise money to ensure his campaign has the resources to compete with Hillary Clinton’s fundraising juggernaut.
His campaign also is beginning to work with the Republican National Committee to set up a joint fundraising committee after his last two rivals—Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich—dropped out in the wake of Trump’s resounding Indiana win on Tuesday.
“I’ll be putting up money, but won’t be completely self-funding,” the presumptive Republican nominee said in an interview Wednesday. Trump, who had largely self-financed his successful primary run, added that he would create a “world-class finance organization.” The campaign will tap his expansive personal Rolodex and a new base of supporters who aren’t on party rolls, two Trump advisers said.
The new plan represents yet another flip-flop for Trump, who has for months portrayed his Republican opponents as “puppets” for relying on super PACs and taking contributions from wealthy donors that he said came with strings attached.
Mr. Trump’s creation of a joint fundraising committee comes eight months behind that of his likely general-election foe, Clinton. She and the Democratic National Committee reached an agreement last August to create the Hillary Victory Fund, which raised more than $60 million through the end of March. Of that, about $13 million has been transferred to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, while nearly $6 million has gone to the DNC.
The former secretary of state raised more than $213 million for her campaign through the end of April, on top of more than $67 million raised by her allied super PACs.
With the many other flip-flops since becoming the Republican party’s nominee, he’s rejected almost every stance that his supporters loved which separated him from the other candidates.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump today backed away a bit from his tax plan, describing it as open to negotiation.
Pressed by CNBC as to how he could simultaneously brand himself as a populist who will take on wealthy elites while proposing sweeping tax cuts for billionaires, Trump backed away from his plan.
I am not necessarily a huge fan of that. I am so much more into the middle class who have just been absolutely forgotten in our country.
Trump described his tax proposal, which was the most detailed policy paper he put out in the campaign, as merely a starting point for a future deal.
You know, when you put out a tax plan, you are going to start negotiating. You don’t say, ‘OK, this is our tax plan, lots of luck, folks.’ There will be negotiation back and forth. And I can see that going up, to be honest with you.
The Trump tax plan has attracted criticism in two main areas: first, in that it loses too much revenue, and second, in that it primarily benefits high-income taxpayers. Both are shown in the Tax Foundation analysis published last year. A third criticism, albeit a more subtle one, is that Trump’s plan reduces rates without doing much to improve tax bases, and therefore generates less growth than it could otherwise, as Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge has argued.
If Trump moderates some of the elements of his tax plan, he may want to consider getting rid of the preferential rate for pass through income, which benefits wealthier Americans and encourages relabeling, and also reducing the size of the zero bracket in his plan, which is about four times larger than the current standard deduction, and contributes substantially to the plan’s $10 trillion revenue loss.
A politician changing their mind toward a better idea can be a good thing as it shows progress. But when a politician changes their mind, not organically, but timed as a means to maximize their popularity, this is called a flip-flop.
In our review of Donald Trump’s tax reform plan would reduce federal revenues by $9.5 trillion dollars over 10 years causing massive cuts from the military to Social Security. Any change here would be progress.
In a reversal, Donald Trump expressed openness to raising the federal minimum wage during an interview on Wednesday.
“I’m looking at that, I’m very different from most Republicans,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee told CNN Wednesday about the prospect of increasing wages.
You have to have something you can live on. But what I ‘m really looking to do is get people great jobs so they make much more money than that, much more money than the $15.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25, but labor groups have been pushing for it to be raised to $15.
“I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is,” he said during the debate.
During a November appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump said the current minimum wage is too high and was slowing job growth.
“We have to become competitive with the world. Our taxes are too high, our wages are too high, everything is too high,” he said. “What’s going to happen is now people are going to start firing people.”
On Wednesday, Trump did caution that lawmakers would have to be careful not to raise the minimum too much.
“If you start playing around too much with that lower level number, you are not going to be competitive,” he said, before reiterating that he’s “open to doing something” with the federal minimum wage.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton backs a $12 minimum wage and has supported local attempts to push for $15 per hour; her rival, Bernie Sanders, supports a $15 federal minimum wage.
Republicans at large are against raising that number. Rick Santorum is the only GOP presidential candidate who backed raising the minimum wage. Ben Carson briefly signaled openness before walking that back.
