With less than two weeks until the 2016 presidential election, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Donald Trump about where, and how, he’s spending his final days as a candidate.
The Republican nominee did not much care for the reporter’s inquiry.
“I think it’s a very rude question, to be honest with you,” said Trump, taking offense to Bash asking why the candidate was at a hotel ribbon-cutting in Washington, rather than campaigning in key battleground locales like Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida.
“For people who say you’re taking time out of swing states to go do this,” began Bash, referencing Trump’s appearance at the soft opening of his latest real estate jewel, Washington’s Trump International.
Cutting her off, Trump criticized not only the question, but also his opponent, the Democratic nominee: “For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting, because Hillary Clinton does one stop and then goes home and sleeps. Yet you’ll ask me that question.”
Trump has campaign stops scheduled in North Carolina for later on Wednesday, before the nation selects it’s next president on Tuesday November 8, 2016.
Donald Trump, trailing his opponent in key battleground states polls less than two weeks from Election Day, said Thursday he’d like to “cancel the election” and be declared the winner.
“Just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump,” the Republican presidential nominee said during a rally here on Thursday.
“Her policies are so bad. Boy, do we have a big difference,” he added of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
The apparently lighthearted comment falls against the backdrop of Trump’s repeated and serious questioning of the legitimacy of the presidential election in recent weeks as he has tumbled in the polls.
Trump has called the election “rigged,” argued that the media and establishment politicians are conspiring to sink his campaign and warned supporters that the presidency could be stolen from them due to voter fraud — instances of which are extremely rare.
Trump is trailing Clinton in national tracking polls and in key battleground states, and its unclear how Trump can amass the Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency if polls hold where they are through Election Day.
Trump’s comments about the election also came as he mocked Clinton as “low energy” for the second time in as many days, even polling the crowd to ask them if they think Clinton or his GOP primary foil Jeb Bush is more “low energy.”
“Who is more low energy, Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton?” Trump asked the crowd, re-upping a question he said Fox News host Bill O’Reilly asked him earlier in an interview airing Thursday evening.
“Hillary!” replied most of the crowd.
Trump had repeatedly mocked Bush, the very early favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination, as “low energy” during the primary contest and has repeatedly argued that Clinton does not have the “strength or stamina” to serve as president. On Thursday, he referred to her as “very low energy.”
Vice President Joe Biden said last week that he wishes he were in high school and could take Donald Trump “behind the gym,” in a response to the groping allegations against the GOP nominee.
Trump said Tuesday that he would “love that.”
“Did you see where Biden wants to take me to the the back of the barn? Me. I’d love that,” the Republican nominee said at a rally in Tallahassee, Fla. “Mr. Tough Guy. You know, he’s Mr. Tough Guy. You know when he’s Mr. Tough Guy? When he’s standing behind a microphone by himself. … Some things in life you could really love doing.”
At a rally for Hillary Clinton in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Friday, Biden said Trump’s “disgusting assertion” that he could kiss and touch women without their consent — caught on a hot mic in a recently unearthed, explosive 2005 video — was “the textbook definition of sexual assault.”
“The press always ask me, ‘Don’t I wish I were debating him?’ No, I wish we were in high school — I could take him behind the gym,” Biden said. “That’s what I wish.”
On Monday, the 73-year-old clarified his remarks, saying he would’ve wanted to fight Trump in high school, but not now.
“If I were in high school,” Biden said. “I want to make it clear I understand what assault is. I’m not in high school. If I were in high school.”
Trump, 70, has made no such distinction with other people he’s seen as his political foes.
Earlier this year, Trump said he wanted to punch a protester who was being escorted from one of his events in the face.
“There’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches — we’re not allowed to punch back anymore,” Trump said at a February rally in Las Vegas. “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher.”
He added: “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
And in 2014 interviews recorded by a biographer and published by the New York Times Tuesday, the brash real estate mogul recalled his love of fighting as a child.
“I was a very rebellious kind of person,” Trump said. “I loved to fight. I always loved to fight.”
“Physical fights?” the interviewer asked.
“Yeah, all kinds of fights, physical,” he replied. “All types of fights. Any kind of fight, I loved it, including physical.”
A visibly angry Newt Gingrich battled Megyn Kelly in a Tuesday night TV segment that left Donald Trump supporters accusing Kelly of bias.
Gingrich, speaking as a surrogate for Trump, said Kelly is “fascinated with sex” after Kelly brought up allegations of sexual assault and unwanted touching by the GOP nominee.
“You are fascinated with sex and you don’t care about public policy,” Gingrich said.
She responded: “You know what, Mr. Speaker, I’m not fascinated by sex, but I am fascinated by the protection of women, and understanding what we’re getting in the Oval Office.”
Gingrich advanced a common conservative complaint — that allegations against Trump are getting an undue amount of media attention.
The conversation ended with Kelly asserting that Gingrich — a paid Fox News contributor — had “anger issues.”
Gingrich addressed the segment on Twitter Wednesday morning, writing, “For the record, @megynkelly was wrong, i don’t have anger management issues. I do have media bias issues!”
Tuesday’s already tough segment turned fiery when Kelly raised the possibility — stated as a question, not a fact — that Trump could be a “sexual predator.”
Gingrich, who when he was Speaker of the House led the impeachment of Bill Clinton on charges related to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, objected to this. He tried to turn the conversation around by invoking allegations against Bill Clinton: “I just want to hear you use the words. I want to hear the words ‘Bill Clinton sexual predator.’ I dare you. Say ‘Bill Clinton, sexual predator.'”
Kelly did not take his bait.
Gingrich also seemed to dismiss Fox’s own electoral map, which shows Clinton well ahead of the 270 electoral votes she needs to win the presidency.
Kelly cited several such maps, including Fox’s, and said “these are nonpartisan outlets that are just trying to call the electoral scoreboard.”
“They’re not nonpartisan outlets,” Gingrich responded. “Every outlet you described is part of the establishment.”
“Fox News? Really? Are we? I don’t think so,” she said.
“Oh c’mon,” Gingrich said.
The segment ended up proving what Gingrich said at the very beginning: That Americans are living in “two parallel universes” right now.
Trump and his surrogates are having a very hard time distinguishing between Bill Clinton’s consensual sex and Donald Trump’s sexual assault. As conservative commentator Ana Navarro explained, “Sexual assault and sex are two different things. One is unwanted, one is wanted.”
Newt Gingrich made an interesting point that Megyn Kelly was fascinated with sex because was in a unique position to be somewhat of an expert being on his third marriage, cheated on his first two wives, asked them for an open marriage, and was having an affair while he was impeaching Bill Clinton.
But I’m sorry we were talking about Megyn Kelly and her supposed fascination with sex.
Donald Trump urged reporters Tuesday to talk to President Barack Obama when asked whether he still believes the presidential election may be stolen from him.
“Ask Obama. Tell him to look at his tape when he was running eight years ago,” Trump said when asked by CNN during an impromptu gaggle with reporters whether he still believes the presidential election will be stolen from him, as he has suggested in recent weeks.
He declined to say whether he still believes the election will be stolen from him.
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the video he referenced.
But a video that resurfaced this week on the conservative website The Daily Caller shows then-Sen. Barack Obama during a 2008 campaign stop answering a voter’s question about whether he could “reassure us that this election will not be rigged or stolen.”
“Well, I tell you what — it helps in Ohio that we’ve got Democrats in charge of the machines,” Obama said during a September 2008 campaign stop to applause. “Um, but look, I come from Chicago, so I want to be honest, it’s not as if it’s just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections. Sometimes Democrats have too. You know, whenever people are in power, you know, they have this tendency to try to tilt things in their direction.”
Obama went on to argue during the event at Kent State University in Ohio that the Justice Department should have a “non-partisan” voting rights division “that is serious about investigating cases of voter fraud, serious about making sure people aren’t being discouraged to vote,” before pivoting to his record as an attorney litigating voting rights cases.
“Those are all part and process of making sure that our democracy works for everyone,” Obama said then.
Obama did not say in his response that the election would be “rigged” or “stolen,” as Trump has repeatedly claimed in recent weeks, instead arguing that more interest and access to the electoral process would be beneficial to American democracy.
“I think the more people participate, the more they are paying attention, ultimately the better off everybody is. OK?” Obama said.
During a rally Tuesday afternoon in Sanford, Florida, Trump again referred to the footage of Obama, arguing that the then-senator was “basically saying that the whole thing is fixed.”
“I said, ‘I don’t believe that he would’ve said that,'” Trump said. “But basically he said it’s rigged and he said, ‘I know ‘cuz I come from Chicago.'”
Mocking Obama, Trump added: “Give me a break, this guy is such a phony guy.”
Trump has repeatedly warned voters in recent weeks that voter fraud — instances of which are very rare — combined with what he deems an “establishment” conspiracy to sink his campaign — could unjustly keep him from the Oval Office.
Asked during the final presidential debate whether he would respect the results of the election no matter the outcome, Trump refused to do so, instead saying, “I will look at it at the time.”
During a campaign stop the next day, Trump said that he will “totally respect” the election results if he wins and if there is a “clear election result.” But he continued to argue that he wanted to reserve the right to “contest or file a legal challenge” to fight a losing result in the election.
The Republican nominee answered a few questions reporters hurled at him Tuesday after he held an event at his property here in Doral, including saying that he believes he is “winning,” despite a slew of recent polls showing him trailing nationally and in key battleground states.
Trump also refused to answer a series of questions about the elections being rigged. He ignored questions about the sexual assault allegations he is facing and when and why he changed his mind about Obama being born in the US, a change of heart he has still not explained.
Asked if he still thinks the election will be stolen from him, Trump says "ask Obama" and refers to some tape from 2008 election pic.twitter.com/dxFJHYmocv
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump frequently touts his support among law enforcement and military figures.
On Monday, he told News4Jax that the United States military “conceptually” endorsed him and that “virtually every police department” in the country backed his bid for the presidency. During last week’s third debate, Trump said his hardline stance on immigration and pledge to build a border wall had earned him an endorsement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But none of that is true.
Federal agencies are barred by law from endorsing candidates in political elections. Under the Hatch Act, only the president, vice president and high-ranking administration officials are allowed to dip their toe in partisan waters.
The Department of Defense, meanwhile, has its own set of guidelines that tightly restricts any active duty military or civilian personnel from publicly choosing political sides.
The same applies to Trump’s repeated claims about ICE, the agency tasked with deporting undocumented immigrants. Trump has doubled down during campaign rallies and onstage at debates by saying that ICE endorsed him.
But the agency has not endorsed any candidate, nor is it able to. Instead the union representing ICE employees, National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, gave the Republican nominee its backing. And it represents just a quarter of the more than 20,000 employees that work at the agency.
Trump did receive an endorsement from more than 88 retired military figures last month. His list of supporters included top military brass and Medal of Honor recipients, including Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow, a former Army green beret and Holocaust survivor, and Vietnam veteran Rear Admiral Charles Williams.
However, Trump’s support from military quarters pales in comparison to what some Republican predecessors received when they ran for the Oval Office.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee who lost in 2012, received a sweeping endorsement from 500 retired generals and admirals. The veterans banded together to release a full-page ad in the Washington Times highlighting their support.
Trump has also overstated his standing with local police departments. He has picked up endorsements from the federal police union, the Fraternal Order of Police.
But the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in New York, the largest police union in the country with 23,000 members, has remained on the sidelines this election and has yet to back a candidate.
Police departments as a whole do not typically endorse candidates in elections. Though that has not stopped Trump from saying they do.
After a meeting with first responders and law enforcement officials in northern Florida on Monday, Trump later boasted on Twitter that he was honored for being endorsed by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
But the department did no such thing. The sheriff’s office took to both Facebook and Twitter to make clear that despite Trump’s comment, they have “NOT made any official endorsement.”
It can be notoriously difficult to pin down Donald Trump on the finer points of policy. But on Monday morning, the Republican presidential nominee put forth a surprisingly specific proposal: He is going to cut “70 to 80 percent” of federal regulations if he wins the White House.
Trump, lagging badly in the polls, made his anti-regulatory vow while speaking at a farmers’ roundtable in Boynton Beach, a town in the must-win state of Florida. The real estate mogul did not explain how his administration would determine which rules to axe, or how they would go about accomplishing such an unprecedented rollback through executive fiat.
“We want clean air, we want clean water,” Trump said. “But we have and you have situations and regulations, which we’re gonna cut ― we will probably cut 70 to 80 percent of the regulations, OK?”
The Republican nominee told farmers that the regulatory oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency, a favorite target of his, was simply too much to bear. The federal agency that enforces clean air and water laws has been a “total disaster,” and regulations on the whole “have been a total catastrophe,” he said.
Trump clarified, however, that he likes fresh air as much as the next person. “Look, we all believe in environment,” he said. “I mean, my primary thing with the environment ― immaculate air, beautiful clean air, and crystal clean water. That’s it. Once you go beyond that, you start to lose all of us, OK?”
Facing an increasingly narrow path through the electoral college, Trump has been banging the anti-regulation drum hard in recent days, starting with his “contract with the American voter.” In that agenda, Trump says that he will require that two regulations be repealed for every new one that goes into effect, offering no rationale for that seemingly arbitrary ratio.
A President Trump might be surprised by how difficult it would be to repeal 70 to 80 percent of federal regulations. A president could undo certain regulations that are established through executive action, and effectively weaken others by choosing not to enforce them much. But businesses mostly face regulations that have been established by Congress, through laws like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Congress would therefore have to undo such laws.
Trump has gone so far as to claim that the nation’s coal barons are practically starving, thanks to regulations.
“I have friends that own the mines. I mean, they can’t live,” Trump said at a Pennsylvania campaign event in August. “The restrictions environmentally are so unbelievable where inspectors come two and three times a day, and they can’t afford it any longer and they’re closing all the mines. … It’s not going to happen anymore, folks. We’re going to use our heads.”
The Code of Federal Regulations is the published list all of the general and permanent rules and regulations by the executive departments and agencies of the federal government of the United States. In it is the 50 categories that represent broad areas subject to federal regulation, which consists of a lot more than “clean air.”
Just to name a few examples of the regulatory agencies that are designed to keep you safe as a homeowner, motorist, student, employee, employer, and a consumer of fruits, vegetables, meat, drugs, alcohol, utilities, banking, and shipping include:
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): regulates and promotes air transportation safety, including airports and pilot licensing.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC): ensures free and fair competition and protects consumers from unfair or deceptive practices.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA): administers federal food purity laws, drug testing and safety, and cosmetics.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): prevents or corrects unfair labor practices by either employers or unions.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): develops and enforces federal standards and regulations ensuring working conditions.
In a span of 10 minutes, Donald Trump both blamed the media for working against him and used their reporting to bolster his attacks on Hillary Clinton during a rally here Monday.
Citing a new “front page” report from the Wall Street Journal, Trump lobbed a new attack against Clinton that included “shocking new revelations” that Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee donated money toward the campaign of Dr. Jill McGabe, the spouse of the FBI official who later oversaw the investigation into Clinton’s email server.
Both the FBI and a spokesman for the Virginia governor denied any political motive behind the donations.
“It just came out,” Trump teased, seeming to applaud the reporting. “They just figured it out.”
But all that was forgotten just a few minutes later, when Trump called the press “thieves and cooks.” Not all, he hedged, “but much of it.”
He then continued on a long-winded diatribe against the press, who he has singled out in recent weeks as one of his main campaign foes this election cycle.
“The media isn’t just against me, they’re against you,” Trump exclaimed. “That’s really what they’re against. They’re not against me, they’re against what we represent. Like Hillary Clinton, they look down on the hard working people of the country, that’s what’s happened. The media is entitled , condescending, and even contemptuous of the people who don’t share their elitist views.”
The crowd excitedly turned and booed the press, training their sights on those of us sitting amid the rows in the open-air amphitheater.
The Republican nominee promised that if elected he would be the voice of the people, a voice that would “boom through the halls of Washington” and prove that this election would be “bigger than Brexit.”
That is, of course, if Mr. Trump pulls off a win 15 days from now. The polls he once held in such high esteem and gleefully spouted from his podium during the primary have now drawn his ire and wary eye. In fact, the GOP nominee has spent much of his dwindling time on the trail disparaging polls that show him down. Of late, Trump has begun decrying the polling practice of “oversampling” calling it a tactic of voter suppression. “It’s called voter suppression,” Trump extrapolated of the goals of oversampling. “Because people will say ‘oh gee, Trump’s out.’ We’re winning, we’re winning.”
In actuality, oversampling is standard practice for pollsters and can give a deeper look into larger groups of voters.
But Trump cautioned of underestimating him, as some did during the primary process. “Remember what he said?” Trump reflected on President Obama’s nay-saying in the early part of the this year. Mocking the president, Trump mimed, “Donald Trump will never win the Republican primary, he will never do it, sorry. Sorry, he will never win. The Republicans will never do that. Well, they did that. Sorry.”
Trump’s speech – as usual – was filled with attacks for opponents. But he did come stocked with new ideas, rehashing Saturday’s Gettysburg speech where he laid out over two dozen policy plans for what the first hundred days of his administration would look like.
Amid laying out his plans, Trump lamented the state of America’s infrastructure. Concerned over the state of our bridges, Trump decided “I’m going to start swimming across rivers and lakes, I don’t want to drive.”
Later at a rally in Tampa, Trump went out of his way to defend himself against attacks linking him to Russia — but then defended Russian President Vladimir Putin against the same attacks from other politicians.
Trump promised he had “nothing to do with Russia,” and was even willing to provide a written statement on the issue.
Yet in his next breath he defended Putin against attacks from fellow American politicians. “They say such bad things about Putin,” he lamented. “And then they’re supposed to negotiate with Putin? Why would he do this?”
Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, resigned amid reports about his dealings with Russia and Ukraine.
According to Donald Trump, when journalists write articles about him, the press is “dishonest” and “out to get him,” but when they write about his rival Hillary Clinton, then they are trustworthy without a shadow of a doubt.
During an interview with CBS Miami, Donald Trump said he’d like to change the nature of the First Amendment in order to make it easier to file libel lawsuits against the media.
Trump spoke with Jim DeFede on Sunday, and he was asked about whether he feels that “too much protection” is given to the free press. Trump affirmed his belief on this issue, stating that America should lean towards the United Kingdom’s system for libel because it gives people who sue media agencies “a good chance of winning.”
“Our press is allowed to say whatever they want and get away with it. And I think we should go to a system where if they do something wrong… I’m a big believer tremendous believer of the freedom of the press. Nobody believes it stronger than me but if they make terrible, terrible mistakes and those mistakes are made on purpose to injure people. I’m not just talking about me I’m talking anybody else then yes, I think you should have the ability to sue them.”
Under English law, defamatory statements are assumed to be false, and the burden of proof lies with the defendant to show that their statement is true. While Trump talked about this system, Trump said that the American press is never compelled to apologize, and that “they can say anything they want about you or me and there doesn’t have to be any apology.”
Donald Trump vowed Saturday to sue the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct in recent weeks.
“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” Trump said during remarks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. “Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
He added that a “simple phone call” to major news outlets “gets them wall-to-wall coverage with virtually no fact-checking ever.”
In the last two weeks, at least 10 women have come forward accusing Trump of inappropriately touching them. Their allegations came after a 2005 videotape surfaced of
Trump bragging about being able to grope women and get away with it.
Trump often threatens to file lawsuits without actually doing so. Earlier this month, he threatened to sue The New York Times when it published assault allegations against him, but nearly two weeks later, he has declined to follow through.
Trump went on to suggest Saturday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was behind the women’s allegations.
“It was probably the (Democratic National Committee) and Hillary’s campaign who put forward these liars with their fabricated stories,” he said. “But we’ll probably find out later through litigation, which we’re so looking forward to.”
Asked about Trump’s claim, Clinton, speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane Saturday night, simply said, “That’s just not accurate.”
Donald Trump regularly threatens to sue individuals who criticize him, but rarely follows through. But when he does and on the occasions that he wins he ruins that person’s life, like former Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin, who was forced to pay Trump $5 million dollars after a judgement went against her.
Lisa Bloom, who represents Jill Harth, who has accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances on her on two separate occasions in the early 1990s, replied to Trump on Twitter Saturday afternoon.
“If Trump sues accusers we then have subpoena power to require not only Trump but all his enablers to appear for depositions. A field day,” Bloom said as part of a series of tweets.
