Category: Unpresidential

Donald Trump Will Not Stop Lying About The Iraq War

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Of all the lies Donald Trump likes to tell while running for president, the one about being an early opponent of the 2003 Iraq War may be his favorite. Despite well-documented evidence that the casino mogul spoke in support of the ill-fated war in the lead-up to the invasion, reporters have repeatedly let the Republican presidential candidate tell a revisionist version of his past stance without pushing back on the claim.

That sequence repeated itself on Wednesday night during NBC’s televised town hall, the first event featuring the two presidential candidates in back-to-back question-and-answer sessions. When it was Trump’s turn, NBC’s Matt Lauer asked the Republican candidate what about his past experiences has prepared him to be the country’s commander in chief.

Trump followed a familiar routine of dodging the question, offering vague assurances of his success, and eventually, outright lying.

“Well, I think the main thing is, I have great judgment. I have good judgment. I know what’s going on. I’ve called so many of the shots. And I happened to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq ― from ― you can look at Esquire magazine from ‘04, you can look at before that. I was against the war in Iraq because I said it would totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It has absolutely been a disastrous war.”

Lauer, who is surely aware of the factual inaccuracy of Trump’s claim, could have pointed out that 2004 was after the invasion, and therefore more of an example of Monday-morning quarterbacking than good judgment. He could have pointed to earlier interviews in which Trump voiced support for the war. Or he could have asked the candidate for another example from before the 2003 start of the war.

Instead, he just moved on to the next question.

Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski was the first to uncover Trump’s earlier remarks about the war in Iraq. In 2000, Trump called for a “principled and tough” policy toward “outlaw” states like Iraq, Buzzfeed found. In 2002, Howard Stern asked Trump outright if he favored invading Iraq. “Yeah, I guess so,” Trump said at the time. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

By 2004 it had become clear that ousting Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein was only the first part of a protracted U.S. military effort there, and Trump was offering a new view on the invasion. In August 2004 he told Esquire’s Cal Fussman:

“Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county? C’mon. Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he’ll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn’t have.”

Lauer is not the first reporter to let Trump get away with his revisionist account of his early stance on the Iraq War. Buzzfeed later reported that several major news outlets ― CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Washington Post ― have, on at least one occasion, offered a platform for Trump to insist he was always against the Iraq War without correcting the candidate.

This is no small oversight. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to secure the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2008, in part, because she voted for the disastrous war that her opponent, Barack Obama, had opposed as a senator.

In this election, voters don’t have the option of electing a candidate who demonstrated better judgment about whether to invade Iraq. But during the town hall on Wednesday, Clinton owned up to her miscalculation on the Iraq War ― and reminded voters of her opponent’s refusal to do so.

“I have taken responsibility for my decision,” Clinton said. “He refuses to take responsibility for his support ― that is a judgment issue.”

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

In Sept. 11, 2002 in an interview on the Howard Stern show, Trump was asked if he supported an invasion of Iraq and responded: “Yeah, I guess so,” and “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” The interview was earlier reported by Buzzfeed News, which posted audio of the exchange.

Esquire, the magazine that published a 2004 interview in which Trump opposed the war a year after it began, earlier this month accused the GOP nominee of “lying” about claims he was always against the war.

Trump’s Comments On Intelligence Briefings ‘Astonish’ Former Intel Officials

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During last night’s Commander-in-Chief forum, Donald Trump made it sound as though the intelligence officials who have been briefing him haven’t hid their disdain for President Obama.

Asked by NBC’s Matt Lauer whether anything he learned during his first two briefings shocked him, Trump said “Yes, there was one thing that shocked me.”

“What I did learn is that our leadership — Barack Obama — did not follow what our experts… said to do,” Trump said. “I was very, very surprised in almost every instance. And I could tell — I am pretty good with the body language — I could tell they were not happy our leaders did not follow what they were recommending.”

Three people who have worked in the intelligence community told ThinkProgress Trump’s comments are both unusual and implausible.

Paul Pillar, a former high-ranking CIA analyst who worked for 28 years in the intelligence community, said he “can’t remember any time where a candidate has said anything about” an intelligence briefing publicly.

“The proper, standard thing for any candidate to do would be to say nothing about it — to at most acknowledge a briefing happened,” he added. “It’s quite out of order to start talking about body language.”

Pillar views Trump’s remarks as crossing a line.

“This is a courtesy provided by the intelligence community to the candidate to help keep them as smart as possible on things the agencies are following, and to turn it around and try and take electoral advantage of it by reading something into it, like [officials] not liking what the current administration is doing, is simply not in order,” he said, adding he’d “be very, very surprised any intelligence analyst would indicate anything about pleasure or displeasure with current policies.”

Pillar’s sentiment was seconded by Bruce Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Institute Intelligence Project.

“I don’t know of any precedent,” Riedel wrote in an email. “It’s also questionable that intelligence briefers would criticize policy decisions even by body language.”

Alan Makovsky, senior national security fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former senior staff member on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, characterized Trump’s remarks as “astonishing.” (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent part of CAP.)

“Speaking as a former member of the [intelligence] community, I think it would put a cloud over the careers of the briefers if people took Trump’s comments seriously,” he said. “If the body language stuff was believed by their superiors, it’d be the last briefing they ever got.”

During a press conference today, Hillary Clinton characterized Trump’s comments as “totally inappropriate and undisciplined,” adding she’d “never comment on any aspect of an intelligence briefing that I received.”

The Washington Post reports that during his first briefing on August 17, Trump was accompanied by Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) and retired U.S. Army Gen. Michael Flynn.

“Trump and Christie listened politely but Flynn repeatedly interrupted the briefers and disparaged their work, according to former officials familiar with the matter,” the Post reports.

(h/t ThinkProgress)

Reality

Retired Col. Steve Ganyard told ABC News the intelligence community was ‘quite upset‘ over Donald Trump’s comments and he “crossed a line.”

Trump placed officers in a terrible situation. Active military is forbidden against wading into political matters, so it would be impossible for the briefers to defend themselves. These people spend years training their bodies to not betray their thoughts. If the body language stuff was believed by their superiors, it’d be the last briefing they ever got.

Media

 

Trump Policy Staffers Quit After Not Being Paid

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Many of Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., policy staffers quit working for the campaign after not being paid or publicly recognized, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

According to former employees, they were told they would be paid when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager. But Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski in July, said the staffers would remain unpaid.

“It’s a complete disaster,” a campaign adviser told the Post. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”

Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said that the D.C. policy shop has been “very successful” but added that “no such oral agreements were made” in respect to paying the staffers.

The two leaders of the policy shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, allegedly promised the workers that the money was coming. The report notes, however, that Dearborn failed to get an approved budget for the D.C. branch after Manafort was appointed.

“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” another staffer told the newspaper.

“There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”

There were also workers who did not hold the policy shop’s leaders responsible.

“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said the former policy coordinator.

“I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”

The list of staffers who left the D.C. policy shop includes Ying Ma, a former staffer to Trump adviser Ben Carson; Tera Dahl, a former assistant to ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); J.D. Gordon, the shop’s director of national security; and conservative writer William Triplett, among others.

The staffers who remained in the Washington office are now working on a volunteer basis, the report added.

(h/t The Hill)

 

Trump Took Millions From Saudi Government While Trashing Clinton Foundation

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly made millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, The New York Daily News reported.

A Daily News investigation found that in June 2001, the GOP nominee sold the 45th floor of Trump World Tower to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $4.5 million.The apartments became part of the Saudi Mission to the United Nations in 2008, according to the report.

At the time of the sale, the five apartment that were sold had yearly common charges of $85,585 for building amenities, meaning Trump has been paid at least $5.7 million by the Saudi government since 2001 — if those rates stayed the same.

The Daily News investigation also found Osama Bin Laden’s half-brother, Shafiq Bin Laden, lived in an apartment in Trump Tower for four months in 1986. He paid an $8,500 security deposit for the apartment.

The GOP nominee has in the past criticized his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, for accepting money from Saudi Arabia for the Clinton Foundation.

“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump said in a June Facebook post.

“I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Describes The “Trumpertantrum” He Would Throw Over Air Force One Staircase Mishap at G-20

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Donald Trump said Monday that he would have left the G-20 summit in China over a logistical flap that left President Obama disembarking Air Force One onto a plain metal staircase.

The president’s subdued arrival on Saturday afternoon, from a secondary exit on the presidential plane, stood in contrast to other world leaders who departed their planes onto red-carpeted stairs — and some, including Trump, perceived it as a snub by Chinese officials.

They won’t even give him stairs, proper stairs to get out of the airplane. You see that? They have pictures of other leaders who are … coming down with a beautiful red carpet. And Obama is coming down a metal staircase,” Trumps said Monday at the beginning of a roundtable with labor leaders in Brook Park, Ohio.

“I’ve got to tell you, if that were me, I would say, ‘You know what, folks, I respect you a lot but close the doors, let’s get out of here,’” he added. “It’s a sign of such disrespect.”

The Clinton campaign quickly seized on the comments and criticized Trump’s temperament. “Temperament Update: Trump would leave G-20 mtg b/c the staircase offended him and he was wrong abt the staircase,” tweeted Clinton spokesperson Jesse Ferguson.

Trump has regularly accused Obama of failing to show strength against foreign leaders and has pointed specifically to Air Force One arrivals to make his point. He made similar claims that Obama had provoked a national embarrassment when Obama visited Cuba and Saudi Arabia earlier this year, calling decisions by the heads of state not to greet Obama at the airport “unprecedented.”

“The truth is they [other countries] don’t respect us. When President Obama landed in Cuba on Air Force One, no leader was there, nobody, to greet him. Perhaps an incident without precedent in the long and prestigious history of Air Force One. Then, amazingly, the same thing happened in Saudi Arabia. It’s called no respect,” Trump said in April.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker rated that comment false, giving it four Pinocchios and noting that heads of state have opted not to greet American presidents on airport tarmacs in the past.

Trump, talking about the staircase, added that he “guaranteed it was built in China, it wasn’t built here, okay?” The stairs in question, which folded out from the center of the plane, were part of Air Force One.

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

This is yet more evidence that Donald Trump does not have the temperament to be a world leader on a global stage if he would throw a fit over a small logistical mishap.

Media

Donald Trump Refuses to Talk About His Role in the Racist Birther Movement

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Years after the issue was debunked, Donald Trump still refuses to back away from the birther conspiracy he helped fuel.

“I don’t talk about it,” Trump told NBC’s Ali Vitali on Monday.

Trump made similar comments to “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert last year.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

First of all, President Obama was born in Hawaii. Shut up.

And second, Donald Trump rose to political fame with the questioning of the legitimacy of America’s first black President, with a clear origin in racial prejudice.

In March 2011 when Trump appeared on “The View” and asked the panel, “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” While on Fox News’s “On the Record,” Trump demanded, “I want to see his birth certificate.” In an interview with NBC’s “Today Show,” he revealed, “I’m starting to think that he was not born here.”

And in the most irony of ironies, Trump has refused to release his own birth certificate and passport information.

2011 Birther Study on Racism

A 2011 study of birthers in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed racial prejudice played a substantial role in those who believed the claims that Obama wasn’t an American.

“The influence of racial prejudice in contemporary U.S. society is typically manifested in subtle, indirect forms of bias. Due to prevailing norms of equality, most Whites attempt to avoid appearing biased in their evaluations of Blacks, in part because of a genuine desire to live up to their egalitarian standards, but also because of concern regarding social censure. As a consequence, Whites’ prejudice is more likely to be expressed in discriminatory responses when these actions can be justified by other factors.”

Trump Fraudulently Photoshops Poll in Tweet

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Donald Trump’s campaign can’t seem to get out of its own way on social media.

On Monday morning, Trump began heralding poll results from Iowa and the key swing state of Ohio. He mentioned the results at a rally and tweeted out nifty graphics on his account to share the numbers.

The only problem: he kept crediting an outlet that doesn’t commission such polls: FiveThirtyEight.

Trump credited Nate Silver’s electoral wizardry for showing he had a lead over Clinton of 46 percent to 43 percent in Ohio and a 44 percent to 41 percent lead in Iowa.

Later, his campaign also tweeted out the poll results, again crediting FiveThirtyEight. Those tweets have since been deleted and retweeted — screenshots are below.

FiveThirtyEight didn’t commission the polls, as noted by Nate Silver and the site’s senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten. Both analysts pointed out that Trump was probably citing the results of the most recent Ipsos/Reuters poll of likely voters from those states.

Indeed, a look at FiveThirtyEight’s current forecast shows Clinton with around a 60 percent chance of winning Ohio and Trump with just over a 50 percent chance of winning Iowa.

As for the Ipsos/Reuters poll of likely voters, however — it actually shows Clinton as the favorite to win the election in November.

Later, Trump sent out another tweet, appropriately citing the Ipsos/Reuters poll with attribution to FiveThirtyEight, thought not its forecast that Trump would lose if the election were held today.

In July, the campaign found itself at the center of a much larger uproar when Trump tweeted a Photoshopped image of Hillary Clinton with anti-Semitic overtones. It was later deleted and replaced.

His son-in-law and political adviser, Jared Kushner, responded in the newspaper he owns, the New York Observer. “If my father in law’s fast-moving team was careless in choosing an image to retweet,” he wrote, “well part of the reason it’s so shocking is that it’s the actual candidate communicating with the American public rather than the armies of handlers who poll-test ordinary candidates’ every move.”

We’ll chalk it down as yet another reminder to be skeptical of what you see on the internet. And what you read in the polls — it’s still a long two months until Nov. 8.

(h/t Mashable)

Trump Surrogate Admits Falsifying Military Service and College Degree

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A top Donald Trump surrogate admitted to falsifying some of his professional accomplishments after a contentious confrontation with CNN anchor Victor Blackwell.
South Carolina preacher Mark Burns, who regularly introduces Trump at his campaign events, had listed on his church’s website that he had a Bachelor of Science degree and served six years in the Army Reserve.

Burns, however, was never in the Army Reserve. He was in the South Carolina National Guard, from which he was discharged in 2008, CNN found.

As far as a Bachelor’s degree, North Greenville University told CNN he only attended the school for one semester. Burns admitted that he did not finish his degree when CNN asked him about it.

When CNN confronted Burns about the various professional and social exaggerations he had featured on his biography, Burns first said the page had “obviously” been either “manipulated or either hacked or added.”

But the site host, Wix, said there was no evidence of a hack.

“This is not fair at all,” Burns told Blackwell during the interview. “I thought we were doing a profile and all of a sudden you’re here to try to destroy my character.”

“I’m not here to destroy your character,” Blackwell replied.

At one point, Burns told Blackwell he believed the interview was off the record, to which Blackwell responded, “I didn’t agree to that.”

Burns abruptly ended the interview by walking away.

CNN followed up with the Trump campaign and was provided with a statement from Burns:

“As a young man starting my church in Greenville, South Carolina, I overstated several details of my biography because I was worried I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a new pastor. This was wrong, I wasn’t truthful then and I have to take full responsibility for my actions,” Burns’ statement reads.

Burns said he did not know if he had been vetted by the Trump campaign.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Donald Trump wants to have “extreme vetting” for immigrants, but he can’t even successfully vet his own team.

Media

Donald Trump Even Refuses to Pay His Top Staff

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has run an unusually cheap campaign in part by not paying at least 10 top staffers, consultants and advisers, some of whom are no longer with the campaign, according to a review of federal campaign finance filings.

Those who have so far not been paid, the filings show, include recently departed campaign manager Paul Manafort, California state director Tim Clark, communications director Michael Caputo and a pair of senior aides who left the campaign in June to immediately go to work for a Trump Super PAC.

The New York real estate magnate and his allies have touted his campaign’s frugality, saying it is evidence of his management skills. His campaign’s spending has totaled $89.5 million so far, about a third of what Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign has spent.

But not compensating top people in a presidential campaign is a departure from campaign finance norms. Many of the positions involved might typically come with six-figure annual paychecks in other campaigns.

“It’s unprecedented for a presidential campaign to rely so heavily on volunteers for top management positions,” said Paul Ryan, an election lawyer with the campaign finance reform advocacy group Campaign Legal Center.

The Trump campaign said the Reuters’ reporting was “sloppy at best” but declined to elaborate.

One of the 10 who were unpaid, Michael Caputo, told a Buffalo radio station in June after he resigned from the campaign, that he was not volunteering. Rather, he said he just had not gotten paid. Caputo confirmed to Reuters on Thursday that the Trump campaign has still not paid his invoices.

In another instance, two high-level former Trump campaign advisers, former Chris Christie campaign manager Ken McKay and Manafort lobbying associate Laurance Gay, departed the Trump campaign in June and went to work for the Trump-backed Super PAC, Rebuilding America Now. In June, the Super PAC paid each of them $60,000, the filings show.

Federal campaign law stipulates that people working for campaigns, who may possess strategic knowledge of a campaign or work as a campaign’s agents, must wait for 120 days before going to work for a Super PAC, a political spending group that can accept unlimited sums of money from wealthy donors so long as it does not coordinate with a campaign.

Through a spokesperson, McKay and Gay said they were volunteering for Trump and did not possess strategic information so the rule did not apply to them.

Another example of free labor is Rick Gates, who was Manafort’s deputy. According to two former high-level Trump staffers, Gates essentially functioned as the Trump campaign manager for more than two months, all while not collecting a paycheck.

By contrast, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook earned roughly $10,000 in July, the same amount as President Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina did in 2012. That same year, Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, was making nearly $7,000 bi-monthly.

Others who, according to the FEC filings, have not been paid include finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, national political director Rick Wiley and senior adviser Barry Bennett, who were not available for comment. Nor were Manafort, Gates and Clark.

Many campaigns have volunteers who work as low-level ground troops, knocking on voters’ doors and passing out campaign buttons. There are instances in other campaigns of senior staff opting not to draw a paycheck. For example, John Podesta, a longtime adviser to Clinton who is now her campaign chairman, considers his role honorary and does not draw a salary.

What is unusual, however, is for a campaign to have such a large group of people in top positions who are unpaid.

After Manafort resigned in August, Trump promoted his senior adviser and top pollster, Kellyanne Conway, to become his new campaign manager.

Before then, Conway ran a Super PAC affiliated with Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. For work from June 2015 to June 2016, the Super PAC paid the firm she owns more than $700,000.

She officially joined the Trump campaign July 1. But so far, according to campaign finance reports that detail spending through July 31, Conway has not been paid by the Trump campaign.

She did not respond to a request for comment.

Reality

Donald Trump has had a long history of refusing payment to the little guys, contractors and employees, now it appears he won’t look out for the big guys either.

Trump Changed Immigration Policy After Mexican Leader’s Wall Tweet

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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton once said, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” Today she was proven correct.

As Donald Trump arrived in Phoenix late Wednesday, fresh from a visit to Mexico City’s presidential palace, he had in his hands a big immigration speech that omitted the usual line that Mexico would have to pay for his proposed wall along the U.S. southern border.

Just after landing, though, Mr. Trump discovered that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had tweeted that he had told the Republican presidential nominee during their private meeting earlier that day that his country would refuse to pay for the wall.

Mr. Trump was peeved that Mr. Peña Nieto had gone public with the fact that the Mexican president had broken what Mr. Trump considered a deal to keep the question of paying for the wall off the table at their initial meeting.

So Mr. Trump hurriedly inserted a new sentence in his immigration speech, and he soon boomed out from the podium his traditional declaration that the wall would be paid for by Mexico—adding, “They don’t know it yet but they’re going to pay for the wall.”

“I had no choice,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on Thursday. But he also said of the Mexican president, “I liked him very much.”

(h/t Fox News)

Reality

But yes he did, Trump could have kept the speech as it was written. The apparent lack of choice by the Republican candidate is further proof that he does not have a temperament fit for the office of the President of the United States of America.

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