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.”
Donald Trump has been heckled at rallies before, but this time, in less than an hour, Trump was heckled at least five separate times. A few of those protesters could be heard chanting “Black Lives Matter!” In every instance, the crowd booed and/or drowned them out with chants of “USA! USA!” After one of the hecklers was escorted out, Trump railed against what he expected the media coverage would be, saying the press always exaggerates people disrupting his rallies But as CNN’s Noah Gray reported tonight, there were potentially up to 10 separate incidents.
Violence at Trump rallies by supporters is the norm.
Forcibly removed from #trump rally. Trump supporters kicked me, grabbed my neck, pushed me, and more all while security jacks me up. Awful
— Romain Stanley (@RomainsPoint) December 5, 2015
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/04/politics/donald-trump-raleigh-protesters-black-lives-matter/
In an interview on Fox & Friends the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that he’d like to “take out” the families of terrorists.
“I would knock the hell out of ISIS… [and] when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. I say ISIS is our number one threat, we have a president who doesn’t know what he is doing and all he’s worried about is climate change, he thinks climate change is something that’s going to go kill us.”
All four Geneva Conventions from 1949 contain “Common Article 3,” which applies to “armed conflict not of an international character.” What does that mean? The U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2006 case Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, ruled that “armed conflict not of an international character” means a war that is not fought against a sovereign state. (A sovereign state simply means a country with a recognized government.) Since groups like ISIS are not considered sovereign states, that means that Common Article 3 applies to the current war on terrorism.
According to Common Article 3, people who are taking no active part in the hostilities “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely… To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever … violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture.”
Experts said this language would make Trump’s approach a violation of the Geneva Conventions, assuming that the family members were not taking part in terrorist activities.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said he not only would bring back waterboarding, the controversial interrogation technique discontinued by the Obama administration, but also would “approve more than that,” even if such tactics prove ineffective.
“Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would — in a heartbeat.”
Trump said to loud cheers during a rally at a convention center here Monday night that attracted thousands.
“And I would approve more than that. Don’t kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.”
Trump said such techniques are needed to confront terrorists who “chop off our young people’s heads” and “build these iron cages, and they’ll put 20 people in them and they drop them in the ocean for 15 minutes and pull them up 15 minutes later.”
“It works,” Trump said over and over again. “Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing. It works.”
Torture is illegal, unethical, and simply does not work. When a subject is in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information provided during the time of torture is useless. It is irresponsible to forget the lessons we learned during the war against terror for Donald Trump to suggest a war crime.
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 would “absolutely” bring back waterboarding as an accepted form of interrogation, he said today on ABC’s “This Week.”
Trump characterized waterboarding as a form of “strong interrogation” that is “peanuts” when compared to tactics used by ISIS against its hostages.
“I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they do to us,” the Republican presidential candidate said. “What they’re doing to us, what they did to James Foley when they chopped off his head, that’s a whole different level and I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation.”
Trump also said he does not want to close any mosques in the United States but he does want to put them under surveillance. He previously said it may be necessary to close some mosques if it is determined “bad things are happening” in them.
When asked if he wants blanket surveillance across all the nation’s mosques, Trump said “strong measures” are necessary.
“The people that are involved in those mosques, they know who the bad ones are and they know who the good ones are, but they don’t talk,” he said. “We have to surveil the mosques.”
Trump also said those on terror watch lists should be restricted from purchasing guns if they are a known “enemy of state.” Currently, someone one a terror watch list can legally purchase a gun in the U.S.
“If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it’s an enemy of state, I would keep them away, absolutely,” Trump said, while emphasizing that he is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.
“If we have an enemy of state, I don’t want to give him anything,” Trump said. “I want to have him in jail — that’s what I want. I want to have him in jail.”
Torture is illegal, unethical, and simply does not work. When a subject is in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information provided during the time of torture is useless. It is irresponsible to forget the lessons we learned during the war against terror for Donald Trump to suggest a war crime.
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/donald-trump-bring-back-waterboarding-35357550
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-bring-back-waterboarding/story?id=35354443
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)
