Trump again pounded the fear drum and lied about the number of refugees the United States is accepting from war-torn Syria.
Our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria. I mean, think of it. 250,000 people. And we all have heart. And we all want people taken care of and all of that. But with the problems our country has, to take in 250,000 people — some of whom are going to have problems, big problems.
Reality
Taking in refugees escaping war is one of the single best things a humanitarian or Christian can do.
A 200,000 figure is an announcement in September by Secretary of State John Kerry that the United States was prepared to boost the number of total refugees accepted from around the world in fiscal 2016, from 70,000 to 85,000. Then, in 2017, Kerry said that 100,000 would be accepted.
That adds up to 185,000 over two years. But this would be the total number of refugees, not the number of refugees from Syria. As for Syria, Obama has only directed the United States to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year.
Donald Trump took credit for Ford Motor Co. deciding not to build new plants in Mexico. The only issue with that: Ford is going ahead with its plans to build south of the border.
Trump first retweeted a link to an article with the headline, “Trump successfully pressures Ford to move Mexican plant to Ohio.”
The article cited a CNNMoney report (with no link) that Ford is relocating its facility from Mexico to Youngstown, Ohio. However a spokeswoman for the company told The Washington Post that Ford does not have any plans for a plant in Youngstown.
In his perceived triumph, Trump took to Twitter to take sole credit for creating American jobs and looking out for the little guy.
Word is that Ford Motor, because of my constant badgering at packed events, is going to cancel their deal to go to Mexico and stay in U.S.
Trump then followed up with another grammatically incorrect tweet asking a rhetorical question, dismissed that question, and finally asking us to imagine a world where that rhetorical question could actually be factual:
Do you think I will get credit for keeping Ford in U.S. Who cares, my supporters know the truth. Think what can be done as president!
Ford never had plans to build a new plant in Ohio and Ford never changed their expansion plans to continue building a plant south of the border. Ford did have plans to shift assembly of some of their truck lines to their existing Avon Lake, Ohio plant. But that decision was made in 2011, a full 4 years before any candidate announced their intention to run for U.S. president.
As Northeast Ohio Media Group reported, the Donald Trump appears to have confused the automobile manufacturer’s expansion plan south of the border with the company’s decision to start production of medium-duty pickups that had previously been manufactured in Mexico. Production began four years after Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another presidential candidate, pushed tax incentives that included breaks for Ford’s plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, about 90 miles from Youngstown.
Harvard economics major Joseph Choe addressed Donald Trump during a question and answer session, asking the candidate about statements he had made over the summer in which he asserted that South Korea takes advantage of the United States.
Before Choe, an Asian-American, could finish his question, Trump interrupted the man asking, “Are you from South Korea?”
“I’m not. I was born in Texas, raised in Colorado,” Choe responded.
The GOP presidential candidate shrugged as awkward laughter from the audience escalated into full-blown cheering for Choe.
“No matter where I’m from, I like to get my facts straight, and I wanted to tell you that that’s not true. South Korea paid $861 million,” Choe said before Trump cut him off again.
Reality
Trump’s question represents an all too common experience for Asian-Americans, who researchers say are stereotyped as the “perpetual foreigners.”
“[E]thnic minorities, especially Asian Americans and Latino/as, are often asked … questions like, ‘No, where are you really from?’ or ‘I meant, where are you originally from?’” a San Diego State University study explained. The implicit message, the study said, is that “they do not share the American identity or have in-group status.”
Or perhaps in this case, the right to question Donald Trump.
Just for the record, Trump is also wrong about South Korea not paying anything toward the costs of U.S. military support.
Appearing on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert apologizes to Donald Trump for the mean things he’s said about him over the years, and gives him the opportunity to apologize as well. Nope.
After Donald Trump allows a supporter to repeat the lie that President Obama is a Muslim, he faced a round of criticism and questions about why he didn’t correct the supporter.
Then the host of NBC’s Meet the Press asks Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson if it would be okay to have a Muslim president and Carson said, “I absolutely would not agree with that.”
This prompted Hillary Clinton to tweet, “Can a Muslim be President of the United States of America? In a word: Yes. Now let’s move on.”
Then Trump responds with a tweet of his own. “Just remember, the birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. She was all in!”
Just remember, the birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. She was all in!
First of all, President Obama was born in Hawaii. Shut up.
The first idea that Barack Obama was not a naturally born citizen can actually be traced back to 2004 with the loony racist ravings of Judah Benjamin and Andy Martin. But the origins of the birther conspiracy theory for the 2008 presidential cycle did indeed start with supporters of Hillary Clinton, but there is no evidence that it came from Clinton directly. Most of the noise from the idiot birther conspiracy theorists came after Jun 13, 2008, days after Clinton ended her campaign on June 7, 2008.
While it is true there was some hand from Clinton supporters, the idea that she started it or was “all in” as Trump claimed, is pure fiction.
At a town hall in New Hampshire, a man stood up and asked the billionaire businessman this question:
“We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American. We have training camps growing when they want to kill us. My question: When can we get rid of them?”
Trump, who had even interrupted the man to say, “We need this question,” didn’t knock down the premise of his question at the end. Here’s how he responded:
“We are going to be looking at a lot of different things. And a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We are going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”
Compare Trump’s handling of the situation to that of John McCain in 2008 and it is clear his failure to allow conspiracy theories to persist shows a lack of being Presidential.
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Wednesday doubled down on his controversial stance that vaccinations are linked to what he described as an autism “epidemic.”
“I’ve seen it,” he said at the second main-stage GOP debate on CNN Wednesday night.
“You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump — it looks just like it’s meant for a horse,” he said of vaccines.
“We’ve had so many instances … a child went to have the vaccine, got very, very sick, and now is autistic.”
The GOP front-runner said he still supported certain vaccines, but in smaller doses over a longer period of time. Under current procedures, he said it’s dangerous for the public.
“Autism has become an epidemic, he said. “It has gotten totally out of control.”
Trump was one of several Republican candidates to question the current medical standards for vaccination, including two medical doctors: neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an ophthalmologist.
Responding to a question, Trump said certain vaccines are “very important.” But he added that there should be “some discretion” given to families — a stance increasingly popular within the GOP despite rising numbers of preventable diseases like the measles.
Carson denied that vaccinations had been linked to autism, citing “numerous studies” that have failed to find any correlations. But he suggested that there still could be a link.
“It has not been adequately revealed to the public what’s actually going on,” Carson said.
Paul, who has previously faced flak for suggesting that vaccines are linked to mental disorders, appeared to walk back his stance on Wednesday.
He described vaccines as “one of the greatest medical discoveries of all time,” while adding, “I’m also for freedom.”
“I ought to have the right so spread my vaccines out, at the very least,” Paul said.
Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism.
A little back story… way back in 1998 there was a Doctor called Andrew Wakefield who published a study in the well-respected medical journal The Lancet that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Funny thing about well-respected scientific journals is, people in your field of study read your paper and try to duplicate the results, this is called peer-review. Nobody could duplicate the results so people became suspicious. Looking harder they found a sub-standard sample size of only 13 subjects, many subjects who already showed signs of autism at the start of the study, discovered data that was fraudulently modified, uncovered plans by Wakefield exploit the new market he created by profiting from his findings, and a discovered conflict of interest. Every single study that has been performed in regards to vaccines and autism continues to find no link between the two. In short Doctor Wakefield is now Mr. Wakefield and can never study medicine again and vaccines remain one of the greatest discoveries of human history.
Just like Mr. Trump, you probably have one friend, who is not a doctor or scientist, who has some story that might shed doubt in your mind that vaccines do cause autism. Think about this; That is just one story versus the vast body of evidence in well-performed scientific studies over decades of time, all publicly available to read, and all show absolutely no link. Know anyone with polio? Know anyone who died from smallpox? I’ll bet good money the answer is no. Thank you vaccines. And thank you evidence-based science.
There should be zero surprise that year after year we experience outbreaks of vaccine preventable disease in the areas that have the lowest vaccination rates where many adults and children die. We’re not at all implying that Donald Trump is responsible for these deaths. What we are saying is that when you are a leader and you go around promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, what you are doing is reinforcing someone’s deeply held beliefs and this makes it all the more harder for them to accept new factual information. It is very irresponsible and dangerous on the part of Donald Trump, Doctor Rand Paul, and Doctor Ben Carson to propagate these false claims.
They hoped to get rich off real estate, and who would be a better mentor than one of the richest men in the world? So they enrolled in Donald Trump’s university to learn the tricks of the trade, some of them maxing out their credit cards to pay tens of thousands of dollars for insider knowledge they believed could make them wealthy.
With Trump rising in the polls as the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, his brief foray into education is an episode — and a business failure — that remains far more obscure than other chapters of the celebrity billionaire’s career.
Never licensed as a school, Trump University was in reality a series of real estate workshops in hotel ballrooms around the country, not unlike many other for-profit self-help or motivational seminars. Though short-lived, it remains a thorn in Trump’s side nearly five years after its operations ceased: In three pending lawsuits, including one in which the New York attorney general is seeking $40 million in restitution, former students allege that the enterprise bilked them out of their money with misleading advertisements.
Instead of a fast route to easy money, these Trump University students say they found generic seminars led by salesmen who pressured them to invest more cash in additional courses. The students say they didn’t learn Trump’s secrets and never received the one-on-one guidance they expected.
It’s a chapter of Trump’s past that shows how he sometimes defies the usual laws of campaign physics. Such allegations of multimillion-dollar fraud might sink other candidates, but in Trump’s case, even some of the students who felt duped said they haven’t given up on him: They like Trump. They admire him. They might even vote for him.
“He says what he means, not like politicians, not like Obama,” said Louie Liu of Hurst, Tex. Liu, a motel owner, said in a sworn affidavit that he paid $1,495 for a three-day seminar, then felt lured into paying $24,995 for more classes, an online training program and a three-day in-person mentorship. A few days later, he called to ask for a refund, but his request was rejected. Trump University, he concluded, was a “scam.”
Trump’s attorneys vigorously deny the charges. Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, said the company offered aspiring real estate investors a quality education and that all but a handful of students were pleased with it.
It is unbelievable, Garten said, that anyone could have thought that Trump University was a university in the traditional sense. Classes were held in hotel ballrooms, after all. “People who say, ‘I thought it was a university with a football team and a bookstore,’ it’s laughable,” he said.
Trump University was born in 2004, when two businessmen proposed to offer distance-learning courses in entrepreneurship under the Trump brand. Trump gave his blessing, according to court documents, becoming a 93 percent owner of the new enterprise.
By 2007, the business had evolved to focus on live real estate seminars. But Trump University was not a university in any legal sense, and beginning in 2005, New York State Education Department officials told the company to change its name because they deemed it misleading. The business became the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in May 2010, and it stopped operating shortly thereafter.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) filed his $40 million suit against Trump and Trump University in 2013, alleging that Trump had illegally operated an unlicensed university and defrauded students. Approximately 80,000 people attended Trump University’s free introductory seminars, according to court documents. About 9,200 of them went on to pay $1,495 for three-day seminars, and nearly 800 paid up to $35,000 for packages that included mentorships and workshops.
“No one, no matter how rich or popular they are, has a right to scam hard working New Yorkers,” Schneiderman said in a news release at the time.
Trump attacked Schneiderman, calling him a “political hack” whose lawsuit was a publicity grab and a shakedown for campaign contributions. “We have a school that’s a terrific school. It did a fantastic job,” Trump told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in 2013.
Trump’s campaign referred questions to Garten, Trump’s lawyer, who said the allegations are baseless and expressed confidence that Trump will prevail.
“We’re completely winning this case,” Garten said.
Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for Schneiderman, said the attorney general could not comment on the pending suit. “We will continue to pursue our claims against Mr. Trump in court on behalf of the people he defrauded,” Mittenthal said.
The judge in the New York case ruled last year that Trump is personally liable for illegally operating a university without a proper license. But the judge also ruled that the statute of limitations prevents Schneiderman from seeking restitution for most of Trump University’s students, a decision Schneiderman is appealing. Whether the university defrauded students and how much Trump might owe in damages are yet to be decided.
Trump University introduced itself to potential customers with advertisements on radio and television, and in newspapers. The ads promoted a free, two-hour real estate seminar and a chance to learn Trump’s strategies from his “handpicked instructors.”
“He’s earned more in a day than most people do in a lifetime,” reads a 2009 ad featuring Trump’s photograph. “He’s living a life many men and women only dream about. And now he’s ready to share — with Americans like you — the Trump process for investing in today’s once-in-a-lifetime real estate market.”
The ad goes on to quote Trump: “I can turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you.”
The soundtrack for the free seminars was “For the Love of Money,” the theme song for “The Apprentice,” Trump’s reality television show. Instructors allegedly told inspirational stories of their own business successes and then encouraged students to pay $1,495 for a three-day workshop.
Students said they were swept along by the promise that they were getting the best real estate education money could buy, according to interviews and several dozen complaints and sworn affidavits filed with the court. But they claimed that the seminars were another sales pitch: To learn how to make it in real estate, they needed additional workshops and mentoring at a cost of up to $35,000.
Was Trump University a scam? We take a look at the available evidence.
Did Trump University sell itself off as an educational institution?
Yes. Trump himself marketed Trump University as a premier institution of higher learning rivaling Wharton Business School. Trump University had advertisements touting their function as a higher educational entity.
They had course books (that you can still purchase on Amazon) with their course numbers.
Was Trump University a licensed school?
No. A New York judge found Donald Trump was running an unlicensed school and was liable. The New York Department of Education demanded that the name Trump University be changed since it was misleading and in violation of the state’s education laws.
Were the professors the best brains in the industry and hand picked by Donald Trump as he promised?
No. They were hired motivational speakers with limited-to-none real estate background and not picked by Trump. In a deposition in the Cohen case last December, Trump suggested under oath that he was not very involved in hiring instructors, despite the program’s promotional materials suggesting otherwise and his lawyers asserting he was “very involved.” Rather, Trump said, “I would see résumés. … I told [Trump University’s president] I want very good people.” He also said he did not personally select instructors for 2009 live seminars
Did Trump University have a A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, as Trump claims in his defense.
Yes, Trump University had an ‘A+’ rating from the Better Business Bureau… only after all of the bad reviews and complaints were removed. The policy of the Better Business Bureau is to remove all claims for a company after 3 years. When Trump University was active it had a rating of ‘D-‘. Donald Trump’s defense of an ‘A+’ rating is a clear deception.
Conclusion
Our conclusion based on all of the available evidence is that Trump University is a textbook example of a bait-and-switch scam.
In criticizing the Iran deal as one of the “worst contracts” he would have to inherit as president, Trump has also incorrectly said that the agreement includes a stipulation that the United States would have to fight Israel in defense of the Iranians.
But there is a clause in there that people are not even talking about that we’re supposed to essentially come to their defense, the Iranian’s defense, and if Israel attacks, you know, where are we? Well, believe me, that will never happen. But how do they agree to things like this? We have a horrible contract. But we do have a contract.
Reality
The State Department disputed Trump’s characterization of the deal’s Section 10 of Annex III.
“This provision of the [agreement] is designed to help bring Iran’s nuclear security and safety practices in line with those used by other nuclear programs around the world,” said Marie Harf, Secretary of State John Kerry’s senior communications adviser, during a CNN fact check.
“The IAEA provides this kind of training routinely, as it is in the interest of all countries that nuclear material be safeguarded from theft and terrorist attacks — the types of ‘sabotage’ in question. This would be the focus of any such assistance by the P5+1 or other states,” she noted. “Nevertheless, this provision does not commit any country to engage in this kind of routine nuclear security cooperation, and it is absurd to suggest it [commits] anyone to ‘defend’ Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
