Trump Wrongly Tweets Social Media is Burying FBI Letter

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Sunday Morning Donald Trump sent out a tweet implying that major social media sites, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are trying to suppress information regarding a letter FBI Directory James Comey sent to congress about emails found on an device belonging to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her soon-to-be ex husband Anthony Weiner.

Reality

Donald Trump received this information in an article from the conspiracy theory website Zero Hedge which is known to produce disingenuous content.

For their only evidence they showed screen grabs of we assume their own social media feeds.

However all social media sites have their own independent algorithms, and for this claim to be true Trump and his unreliable source would need to provide evidence of a level of collusion between competing social media companies.

There are a few things to consider when looking at trending topics. First, they are all algorithm-based, meaning some computer code was written to determine what topics are most important, and second, part of that algorithm factors in the things that you like.

But a simple  review of each social media site shows, in most cases, the James Comey letter is indeed in the top trending stories.

Trump has a social media team who should be able to debunk this for him.

Google

Google Trend searches for “Clinton FBI” and “FBI investigation Clinton” both showed a 100% interest value at the time of Trump’s tweet.

And news about James Comey’s letter was the top story to a logged out user.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-google

Facebook

Top story on Facebook.

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Twitter

Top of the Twitter news for a logged out user.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-twitter

 

 

 

Trump Questions Veracity of Ballot Counting in Colorado

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Donald J. Trump has found a new reason to question the legitimacy of the 2016 election — ballots — and he wasted little time here on Saturday before taking issue with the voting system in this largely vote-by-mail state.

“I have real problems with ballots being sent,” Mr. Trump said, pantomiming a ballot collector sifting envelops and tossing some over his shoulder while counting others.

“If you don’t have a ballot, they give you another one and they void your one at home,” he told the crowd at an afternoon rally. “And then, of course, the other side would send that one in too, but, you know, we don’t do that stuff. We don’t do that stuff.”

Mr. Trump’s repetitive accusations of a “rigged” election and a slanted electoral system are grounded in the belief that fraudulent behavior would only help his opponent.

Yet it was a Trump supporter in Des Moines who was charged on Thursday with a Class D felony in Iowa, having sent in two absentee ballots, both supporting Mr. Trump.

The voter, Terri Rote, told Iowa Public Radio that she had not planned to send in two ballots, but made a “spur of the moment” decision.

“The polls are rigged,” she added, repeating a line often said by Mr. Trump.

The Polk County attorney, John P. Sarcone, told Iowa Public Radio that it was one of the very few instances of voter fraud that he had come across in his more than three decades of service. And nationally, voter fraud is rare, despite Mr. Trump’s insistence.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump seemed undeterred in his wariness of the security of ballots, despite the same process having been in place when Cory Gardner, a Republican, defeated the incumbent Democratic senator, Mark Udall, in 2014. Mr. Trump closed his rally by encouraging his supporters to “follow their ballots” to make sure they are registered and counted.

“You can follow your ballot, make sure that ballot is registered, make sure that ballot is counted,” he said, later adding, “So follow your ballot, and if you do I, really think were gonna win Colorado and maybe win it big.”

The most recent polling out of Colorado, a Quinnipiac poll from two weeks ago, found Mrs. Clinton had a lead of eight points in the state.

(h/t New York Times)

Trump Calls Black Supporter ‘Thug,’ Throws Him Out Of Rally

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Donald Trump ejected a black man waving a note at him at a North Carolina rally, after accusing him of being a “thug” hired by Democrats to disrupt the event.

But C.J. Cary, the man who was thrown out, claims he is a Trump supporter and was merely trying to deliver a message to the candidate to mend ties with some key demographic groups the GOP presidential nominee has offended.

At the Wednesday campaign rally in the town of Kinston, Cary stood a few dozen feet from the stage trying to get Trump’s attention by waving a note and yelling “Donald,” the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

Trump assumed Cary was a disruptive protester.

“Were you paid $1,500 to be a thug?” Trump asked Cary, according to the Observer. The real estate mogul then asked security to remove him.

Waving a note at a rally is certainly an unusual way to get a presidential candidate’s attention. The News & Observer’s Bryan Anderson, who was at the rally on Wednesday and reported on Friday that Cary is a Trump supporter, told The Huffington Post he initially thought the man was a protester as well.

In a tweet from the rally, Anderson simply referred to him as a “protester.”

Shortly after the rally, however, Cary contacted Anderson to tell him his story.

Cary, an ex-Marine and resident of Nash County, not far from where Kinston is located, told the reporter that he plans to vote for Trump. He merely wanted to offer his advice that the candidate should treat certain groups of Americans with more respect. He singled out African-Americans, women, college students and people with disabilities as constituencies that deserved better treatment from the GOP nominee.

“He entirely mistook that and thought that I was a protester,” Cary said.

Trump accused Clinton of paying Democratic activists to disrupt his rallies in the third and final presidential debate on Oct. 19.

In August, Trump’s security ejected Jake Anantha, a young Indian-American supporter from a Charlotte, North Carolina, rally after assuming the local college student was there to disrupt the event. Anantha subsequently said he would no longer be voting for Trump.

During the Republican primary, when protests at Trump rallies were more common, Trump drew criticism for encouraging his supporters to hurt protesters ― something they proved all too happy to oblige. The demonstrators on the receiving end of the worst violence appear to be disproportionately people of color.

There is something especially ironic, however, in Trump immediately dismissing as a “thug” a black supporter, who was specifically trying to get Trump to be more sensitive to African-Americans. “Thug” is a particularly racially fraught term that many observers, including Seattle Seahawks star Richard Sherman, argue has become a socially acceptable way to call black men the N-word.

Trump has historically low support among African-American voters, after months of inciting ― and benefitting from ― bigotry and racism.

Although Latino immigrants and Muslims have been the biggest targets of his campaign-trail invective, Trump has a long history of anti-black racism, from his public campaign to execute the Central Park 5 in 1989 to his leading role in the birther movement questioning President Barack Obama’s eligibility for the presidency. (The Central Park 5, young men of color accused of brutally raping a woman in Central Park, have since been exonerated by DNA evidence and received multi-million-dollar settlements from the city, but Trump continues to insist on their guilt.)

Even Trump’s attempts to show he is not racist have been racially insensitive. Trump routinely stereotypes African-Americans and Latinos as impoverished “inner-city” residents, a characterization members of those communities have complained is patronizing.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Media

A Single Facebook Post is All the Proof Trump Needs For Widespread Voter Fraud

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A single social media post about ballot confusion in Texas has Donald Trump stoking claims of electoral corruption, but local officials say there’s not foundation for concern as it was just human error.

Some voters in Texas, which began its early voting period this week, have experienced problems casting their ballots. A Randall County voter recalled her own mishap in a Facebook post on Monday, saying that she tried to cast a straight Republican ballot — including a vote for Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence — but wound up inadvertently selecting the Democratic ticket of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

As of Thursday morning, the woman’s post has been shared nearly 10,000 times and has generated hundreds of comments.

The Republican presidential nominee took to Twitter to suggest Thursday there have been widespread cases of “vote flipping,” the act of casting a vote for one candidate only to see it awarded to the opponent instead.

“A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas,” Trump tweeted. “People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on?”

A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s tweet was a continuation of his oft-invoked claims of a “rigged” election, which has emerged as his central campaign message amid eroding poll numbers.

But Shannon Lackey, the elections administrator at Randall County, said there’s no reason for concern.

“Absolutely not … It is not happening in any way, shape or form,” Lackey told CNN on Thursday. “I stand 100% behind what I do. I stand behind my machines, my staff.”

The ballot complaints have surfaced elsewhere in Texas. Another woman said Monday on Facebook that a family member in Arlington, Texas, had her Republican vote changed to Clinton, a post that has been shared more than 200,000 times.

Potter County, which borders Randall County, has encountered similar problems. In each case, officials have attributed the problems to human error.

“There is nothing wrong with any of the machines we use for voting,” Potter County Judge Nancy Tanner said in a statement this week. “They do not flip your vote. They do not flip parties. Humans do that.”

Frank Phillips, the elections administrator in Arlington’s Tarrant County, said that his investigation “indicated that the voter did not follow the directions for straight-party voting.”

Randall County uses the Hart Intercivic eSlate for its elections, an electronic system that allows voters to turn a wheel and push a button to indicate preferences, and Lackey said those machines “work exactly as intended.”

Moreover, voters are dealt a summary screen at the end of each ballot, which allows them to confirm their choices before casting.

Lackey said she is confronted with such confusion most election cycles, and this year has been no exception. Her personal hypothesis is that voters, so accustomed to touch screens in their everyday lives, hit the machine’s button after indicating their choices, inadvertently “deselecting” their preferred vote.

Lackey also pointed out that the Randall County woman behind the viral Facebook post never alleged corruption, and she made it clear that she was able to correct her vote before officially casting the ballot.

“She didn’t use ‘flipping’ or anything like that in her original post,” Lackey said. “I believe that her intention in putting this on Facebook was to say, ‘Hey everyone, pay attention.'”

(h/t CNN)

Trump Calls African-American Neighborhoods ‘Ghettos’ With ‘So Many Horrible Problems’

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First they were “inner cities” – now they’re just “ghettos.”

Donald Trump once again appeared to equate an entire ethnicity with a socio-economic segment as he, during a campaign rally in Ohio on Thursday, pledged to “work with the African-American community” to solve the problem of the “ghettos.”

“And we’re going to work on our ghettos, are in so the, you take a look at what’s going on where you have pockets of, areas of land where you have the inner cities and you have so many things, so many problems,” Trump rambled to a mostly white audience in Toledo, appearing to catch himself using the politically tabooed word. “So many horrible, horrible problems. The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs.”

“Ghetto” is generally not used by public officials as it’s considered an outdated, insensitive word for struggling urban areas.

Trump has previously been rebuked for associating African-Americans – who comprise roughly 13% of the total population – with the words “inner cities.”

The Republican nominee has recently launched outreach efforts directed at black voters, but appears to have failed severely as polls have shown that less than 1% of African-American voters are going to punch in his name on the ballot.

At another point during the Toledo rally, Trump seemed to question the necessity for democracy.

“What a difference it is. I’m just thinking to myself right now – we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right?” he said in front of the roughly 2,800 rally attendants, comparing his presidential bid with Hillary Clinton’s.

Trump, meanwhile, is doubling down on past remarks about the election being “rigged” – an insinuation that political experts claim could have very real and very violent consequences.

(h/t New York Daily News)

Media

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Trump Says He’ll Teach Military Expert ‘a Couple of Things’ About Mosul

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Donald Trump went on the offensive against a military expert and former dean of the Army War College, Jeff McCausland, who said the Republican nominee’s comments this weekend about the battle to reclaim Mosul in Iraq show he doesn’t have a firm grasp of military strategy.

“You can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the ongoing offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul is turning out to be a “total disaster.”

“We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. VOTE TRUMP and WIN AGAIN!” he tweeted.

Trump doubled down on his assertion that the element of surprise is an important military strategy.

“I’ve been hearing about Mosul now for three months. ‘We’re going to attack. We’re going to attack.’ Meaning Iraq’s going to attack but with us. OK? We’re going to attack. Why do they have to talk about it?” he asked Stephanopoulos.

“Element of surprise. One of the reasons they wanted Mosul, they wanted to get ISIS leaders who they thought were, you know, in Mosul. Those people have all left. As soon as they heard they’re going to be attacked, they left,” Trump added. “The resistance is much greater now because they knew about the attack. Why can’t they win first and talk later?”

But according to The New York Times, some military experts disagree with Trump’s claims that the element of surprise is crucial to win the fight against ISIS.

“What this shows is Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy,” McCausland told the Times.

McCausland replied to Trump’s comments to Stephanopoulos in a lengthy statement today, saying, “I can’t wait to sit down with Mr. Trump and hear what he has to teach me about military strategy. I’m happy to compare my record of over 45 years working in national security affairs with his any time.

“When it comes to the question of the Mosul offensive, Mr. Trump doesn’t understand that 99.9 percent of the troops involved are Iraqi,” McCausland continued. “I reassert my statement to The New York Times: Mr. Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy.”

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also hit Trump for his comments to Stephanopoulos yesterday at a joint campaign event with First Lady Michelle Obama in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, today.

“And yesterday when he heard a retired army colonel and former dean of the Army War College said that Donald doesn’t understand military strategy, Trump said ‘I’ll teach him a couple of things,'” she continued. “Well, actually, Donald, you’re the one who’s got a lot to learn about the military and everything else that makes America great.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is on the ground in Iraq and told ABC’s Martha Raddatz in an interview earlier this week that he’s “encouraged” by the progress in the fight against ISIS because it “is going according to plan … ISIL will surely be destroyed.”

Trump blamed Clinton and President Barack Obama for the need to reclaim Mosul.

“We had Mosul. We have to take it because Hillary Clinton and Obama left that big vacuum, and ISIS went in, and they took Mosul,” he said.

(h/t ABC News)

Media

Trump to Dana Bash: That’s ‘a Very Rude Question’

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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.

(h/t CNN)

Media

Trump: ‘We Should Just Cancel the Election’ and Declare Me the Winner

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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.”

(h/t CNN)

Media

Trump: I Would Love to Fight ‘Mr. Tough Guy,’ Joe Biden

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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.”

(h/t Yahoo)

Trump Surrogate Newt Gingrich Has Heated Exchange with Megyn Kelly

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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.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

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.

Media

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