During a Wisconsin Town Hall with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren, Trump again repeated comments long debunked, and never addressing those criticisms.
On immigration, Trump says he is “totally in favor of immigration” but people have to come in legally. He says he will build a wall and Mexico will pay for it. “It’ll be so easy,”
To much applause from the Fox News audience, Trump went on to claim it would take around $10 billion to build.
The claim that he can use a trade deficit with Mexico to force them to pay for a wall should enlighten you that Donald Trump does not understand how the world works. A trade deficit, which is also referred to as net exports, is an economic condition that occurs when a country is importing more goods than it is exporting.
The deficit equals the value of goods being imported minus the value of goods being exported, and it is given in the currency of the country in question. For example, assume that the United States imports from Mexico $800 billion dollars worth of goods, while exporting to Mexico only $750 billion dollars. In this example, the trade deficit, or net exports, with Mexico would be $50 million dollars.
In our example the holder of that $50 million dollars is the private (and probably some public) companies operating in Mexico, not the Mexican government. Essentially Trump is demanding that the Mexican government to pay for a wall with money that he should know it doesn’t have ownership of.
Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski turned himself in to Florida police Tuesday after being charged with misdemeanor battery for an incident with a reporter at a campaign event earlier this month, according to the Jupiter Police Department.
Michelle Fields, a former reporter for Breitbart, filed charges alleging that Lewandowski pulled her arm while she attempted to ask Trump a question at an event at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida on March 8.
Lewandowski was later released and is scheduled to appear in court on May 4, according to a senior law enforcement official. Under Florida law, a first offense could carry a penalty of up to one year in prison or a fine of $1,000.
“Mr. Lewandowski is absolutely innocent of this charge,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “He will enter a plea of not guilty and looks forward to his day in court. He is completely confident that he will be exonerated.”
Reality
Trump, known for denying even the most in-your-face facts, took to Twitter to defend Lewandowski and did not disappoint calling him a “decent man” and saying the video surveillance shows “nothing there.”
Wow, Corey Lewandowski, my campaign manager and a very decent man, was just charged with assaulting a reporter. Look at tapes-nothing there!
However reality once again contradicts Donald Trump. The Juniper Florida Police released a video obtained from overhead footage by a security camera clearly showing Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbing reporter Michelle Fields where her bruises appeared.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper sparred with Donald Trump at a Tuesday town hall over an unflattering image he retweeted of Heidi Cruz last week.
Cooper told Trump he had the argument of a 5-year-old when the Republican presidential candidate tried to defend his reposting the image that compared Ted Cruz’s wife to Melania Trump.
When asked about the tweet, Trump was comically disingenuous:
“I thought it was a nice picture of Heidi. I thought it was fine,” Trump said.
“C’mon,” Cooper responded.
“I thought it was fine. She’s a pretty woman,” Trump fired back.
“You’re running for president of the United States,” Cooper said.
“I didn’t start it. I didn’t start it,” Trump responded.
“Sir, with all due respect, that’s the argument of a 5-year-old,” Cooper said.
“You would say that. But he started it! The problem with our country — that thinking, that’s the problem with the country. He sent out a picture” — Cruz did not, as Cooper noted, it was an anti-Trump group — “it was Romney people, they were very embarrassed he did so poorly four years ago, he choked like a dog.”
It’s a tradition for The New York Times to have a 1-on-1 interview with a presidential candidate to dig deep into their foreign policy positions so the public can come away with a better understanding. This usually happens much later in the race but this year however is not usual as the front-runner for the Republican candidacy for the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has little-to-none public foreign policy positions. So the Times reached out to Trump to get some info out of him and what we got was a rambling mess and some really bad ideas.
Trump would use nuclear weapons in the fight against ISIS.
Trump had no idea who the head of China is.
He is willing to pull troops from Japan and South Korea.
He believes it is okay for Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons.
He is totally cool with Saudi Arabia collapsing if they don’t join the fight with ISIS.
Reality
Stop The Donald Trump is reading the transcript of the conversation and working on an analysis, which will be coming soon.
If you don’t have an opportunity to read the transcript allow us to sum up the conversation: Trump is asked a direct question, he rambles about nothing for 200 words, then The Times reporter asks if he can please answer the question, repeat.
Trump got many details just plain wrong. For example:
Trump had no idea who the head of China is.
That would be President Xi Jinping
Some of the ideas that Trump put forward are just outright stupid and dangerous. For example:
He is willing to pull troops from Japan and South Korea.
And then what? China and North Korea become stronger which would destabilize Asia.
He believes it is okay for Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons.
And then what? Now we have an arms race in Asia, exactly what we’ve been trying to avoid for the past 50 years.
He is totally cool with Saudi Arabia collapsing if they don’t join the fight with ISIS.
And then what? With no Saudi Arabia to balance the region, Iran becomes stronger.
Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich all stepped back from their earlier pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee during Tuesday night’s CNN town hall.
“All of us shouldn’t even have answered that question,” Kasich said of the pledge party officials asked all the candidates to sign in September.
No, I don’t anymore,” Trump said, when asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if he continued “to pledge to support whoever the Republican nominee is?”
Trump said he has “been treated very unfairly” by the Republican National Committee and party establishment figures. The billionaire front-runner accused rival Cruz of “essentially saying the same thing” in response to a question about the pledge.
Earlier, Cruz had told Cooper when asked the same question: “I’m not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and my family … I think nominating Donald Trump would be an absolute trainwreck, I think it would hand the general election to Hillary Clinton.”
Donald Trump on Monday defended his past controversial remarks on women, saying they date from his time as a celebrity entertainer.
Radio host Charlie Sykes challenged the Republican presidential front-runner during an interview on WTMJ in Milwaukee, asking whether the rules are different for celebrities when it comes to insulting women.
“The rules aren’t different, but certainly I never thought I would run for office,” Trump responded before the host finished asking the question.
“Many people, you know, Howard Stern would interview me, and everybody would be having fun and the women would be laughing,” Trump said.
In the interview, Trump said he has always treated women well as a businessman, putting many in executive positions.
“I thought this was actually a dead issue until I just spoke to you,” Trump said when pressed about his remarks on women, including his feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, whom he has taken to calling “crazy Megyn” on Twitter.
“Really?” Sykes responded.
“I’d rather be talking about trade; I’d rather be talking about, you know, the things I’m best at: border security,” Trump said, pivoting to other campaign topics.
Reality
As we’ve documented, Trump made a whole ton of sexist comments after declaring his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the President of the United States of America, and not just towards Megyn Kelly. For example:
Just earlier this week he tweeted which wife between him and Ted Cruz is more doable.
After multiple polls continue to come to the conclusion that he has a massive unfavorable rating with women, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is lashing out at media coverage of his treatment of women in a series of tweets that culminated in the statement:
“The media is so after me on women. Wow, this is a tough business,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!”
The tweets include:
"@Tytan01: Dear @CNN, after doing a quick Google & Twitter search there are over 15,000 women's groups supporting DonaldTrump. Stop Lying."
Yes Donald Trump, it’s the media fault and all of your own comments where you disrespected women have nothing to do with this. Here are just a few examples where it was the media’s fault:
When you joked that Hillary got “shlonged” in 2008.
Donald Trump said the U.S. should rethink its involvement in NATO because the defense alliance costs too much money.
In remarks to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Trump said the U.S. pays a disproportionate amount to NATO to ensure the security of allies.
“Frankly, they have to put up more money,” he said. “We are paying disproportionately. It’s too much, and frankly it’s a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea.”
In a CNN Town Hall Trump said about NATO:
“[NATO is] costing us too much money, and frankly, have to put up more money… We’re taking care of, as an example, the Ukraine. I mean, the countries over there don’t seem to be so interested. We’re the ones taking the brunt of it. So I think we have to reconsider — keep NATO, but maybe we have to pay a lot less toward the NATO itself. “
Reality
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and Washington is not providing arms to the government as it is fighting pro-Moscow rebels, though has provided nonlethal aid and has helped support international bailouts of the Ukrainian economy. Once the third-largest nuclear power in the world, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in return for an assurance that the U.S. would help protect its sovereignty. Critics point out that Trump’s remarks were “really quite astonishing,” speculating that Trump is ignorant of the United States’ diplomatic relations with Ukraine.
It is important to point out that the United States “taking the brunt” as Mr. Trump has suggested, is a bit of loaded statement. All member countries have pledged at lest 2% of their GDP to fund NATO, and the United States has by far and away the highest GDP of all member nations, in-fact 6 times more than Germany who has the next highest GDP of the NATO members. The whole theory of NATO is to keep the United States involved in Europe long-term, to promote our goals, and to deter another world war, so of course we would be spending more. However it is fair to point out that President Obama has been critical of some of the European partners for not spending enough to fund NATO.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump managed to squeeze a public job interview into a news conference at the site of his upcoming hotel in Washington, D.C.
A woman in the crowd introduced herself as a 9/11 survivor and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and voiced support for his plans for the U.S. military. Then she asked if work at the Trump International Hotel would be available to veterans.
“What are you talking about here? We are doing some of that actually already,” Trump responded. “We have it very much involved. Why what are you looking for? What kind of a position?”
The real estate magnate invited the woman up to the podium to conduct a job interview for a position at the forthcoming hotel.“So what’s your experience in front of the world?” he asked.
The woman replied, “Well I design. I do wreaths. I do all types of decorations.”
“And you like this building?” Trump said. “So here’s what I’m going to do. There’s the man.”
Trump directed the woman to one of his associates while telling the crowd, “If we can make a good deal on the salary, she’s gonna probably have a job.”
Later on, a reporter pointed out that it’s “pretty remarkable” that Trump just offered a job to a complete stranger and asked what inside his gut led him to that decision.
“I felt good about her. I’ll tell you what, I looked at her, I said she, you know, I have gut instincts, OK? And we’re allowed to have that,” Trump said. “And I looked at her and she asked a question and it was a very positive question… she just seemed like a good person to me.”
He said that maybe she won’t qualify for a position but he thinks she will.
Reality
It was a totally staged publicity stunt.
The reporter who praised Donald Trump’s military policy and inquired about veterans jobs was not a member of the press. Yet somehow, Alicia Watkins, a retired Air Force staff sergeant who has appeared on Oprah, was given media credentials by the Trump campaign and permitted to ask a question of the candidate, a question that (surprise!) turned into an impromptu job interview.
The Trump campaign, which handled credentials for the press conference, initially told CNNMoney that Watkins worked for “a site called Troops Media which focuses on military and veterans issues.”
Later that afternoon Dylan Byers of CNNMoney tweeted that Troops Media did not seem to exist.
When told that there was no evidence of any such site on the Internet, the Trump campaign said it would look into the matter.
CNNMoney then received a call from a woman who identified herself as Alicia Watkins who said she would send an email explaining “why Troop Media is no longer on the Internet as of today.”
The woman, who said her phone was about to run out of battery, hung up while being asked if she still wanted to identify herself as a reporter. The woman called from a blocked number and did not leave any contact information. The promised email has yet to arrive.
When Stop The Donald Trump looked into Troops Media, we can confirm that Troops Media does not exist. We did find a blog called http://troopsmedia.blogspot.com/ with nothing on it except a post from January 5, 2016 stating the blog is rebuilding after a hacker attack. No cached pages can be found on search engines, so it cannot be determined if the site had any content before January 5th. And finally no blogger.com profile id could be retrieved to help identify the owner.
Here’s Donald Trump’s dilemma: He is running for president on a platform of bringing jobs back to the U.S. and making America Great again.
But at his private club in south Florida, he has filled his staff almost exclusively with imported foreign workers. And he has been doing it for years.
The U.S. Department of Labor has confirmed to CNN that between 2013 and fall 2015, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club posted 250 seasonal job openings and filled just 4 of those jobs with American workers. The club requested the rest of the staff be temporarily imported through the Federal government’s H-2B visa process. Basically, Mar-a-Lago brings in its seasonal staff from overseas
From 2013 to 2015, Mar-a-Lago was approved to hire 246 foreign workers by the U.S. Department of Labor with H-2B visas, which allow U.S. employers to temporarily import foreign workers to fill non-agricultural jobs that can’t be filled with Americans.
To get approval for H-2B visas, employers must prove they need extra workers and that they made an effort to recruit domestic workers, contacted everyone who responded to ads and hired all qualified applicants. After receiving approval, employers must petition U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to bring foreign, temporary workers into the country.
Trump has made the case that he couldn’t find American workers. “It’s almost impossible to get help,” the Republican presidential candidate told CNN last month. “And part of the reason you can’t get American people is they want full time jobs.”
