Trump on Whether Election Will Be Stolen: ‘Ask Obama’

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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.

(h/t CNN)

Media

Trump Cites Police, Military, ICE Endorsements That Didn’t Happen

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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.”

(h/t NBC News)

Trump Says He Wants To Cut ‘70 To 80 Percent’ of Regulations

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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.”

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

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.

 

 

Trump Keeps Criticizing the Media While Citing it to Attack Clinton

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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.

(h/t NBC News)

Reality

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.

Media

Trump Suggests Curtailing First Amendment

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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.”

Trump’s relationship with the media has been complicated to say the very least. Throughout his campaign, Trump blacklisted news agencies for months, ranted about “dishonest” journalists numerous times, and has threatened to expand libel laws as president.

Recently, the litigious Trump has threatened to sue The New York Times for publishing his old tax information. He has also made similar legal threats to sue the women accusing him of sexual abuse, along with media outlets giving them coverage.

(h/t Mediaite)

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CBS Miami

Trump Vows to Sue All Female Accusers

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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.”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

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.

Media

Trump Walked Off of an Interview After a Question About Racism

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Donald Trump on Thursday cut an interview short with an Ohio journalist after the correspondent asked him to address criticism that he’s racist and sexist.

The Republican nominee quietly thanked NBC 4’s Colleen Marshall and began to walk away while she was halfway through asking him how he feels about being “labeled a racist” and “called a sexist” so close to Election Day.

When she proceeded to probe him for his response, he said: “I am the least racist person you’ve ever met.”

Trump had been discussing an array of topics with Marshall, including his claims that the election is rigged and Republican leaders who have withdrawn their support from him, for about three minutes before she brought up the apparently sensitive issue.

(h/t Time)

Reality

If Trump can’t answer a simple question from a reporter without losing his temper, how can we expect him to react when dealing with adversarial foreign leaders?

Trump claimed he was the least racist person ever, and we might be inclined to believe him if it wasn’t for the racist things he has said over the course of his campaign.

So far we’ve cataloged over 115 instances of Trump making a racist comments or claims. Some of them include:

  • Donald Trump was the leader of the “birther” conspiracy theory movement, which was a racist attempt to delegitimize America’s first African-American president.
  • As House Speaker Paul Ryan explained, Donald Trump’s remarks saying a judge presiding over a lawsuit involving his scam of a university was biased solely because of his Mexican heritage is “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
  • Trump tweeted wildly racist and inaccurate stats about murders by race in the United States.
  • Trump retweeted the same white supremacist not once, but twice.
  • The Trump campaign had 3 known white supremacists as delegates to the Republican National Convention to represent Trump, William Johnson, Guy St. Onge, and Lori Gayne whose Twitter handle was “whitepride”.

Media

Trump Calls Clinton ‘A Nasty Woman’

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During the 3rd and final presidential debate, Donald Trump denied any allegations that he’s groped or kissed women, the Republican nominee attempted to deflect the claims with one of his own: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody.”

Then, not a half hour later and completely unprompted, Donald Trump spoke into his microphone to interrupt Hillary Clinton while she was answering a question about how she would raise taxes on the rich to tackle debt and entitlements if she were to become president, saying she was “such a nasty woman.”

“My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it,” Clinton said.

“Such a nasty woman,” Trump said into the microphone while Clinton was talking.

She continued her answer without acknowledging the insult.

(h/t CNN)

Media

At Third Debate, Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results If He Loses

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Donald Trump does not respect the democratic process.

A defiant Donald Trump used the high-profile setting of the final presidential debate here Wednesday night to amplify one of the most explosive charges of his candidacy: that if he loses the election, he might consider the results illegitimate because the process is rigged.

Questioned directly as to whether he would accept the outcome should Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton prevail on Nov. 8, Trump demurred. “I will keep you in suspense,” the Republican nominee said.

When given a chance to clarify his remarks by host Chris Wallace, Trump simply repeated his refusal to say for certain that he would accept the results of the election.

Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying,” saying he was “talking down our democracy.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

With his leading of the racist birther movement and his refusal during the third debate, this is the third consecutive presidential election that Donald Trump tried to de-legitimize.

In order to understand just how anti-democracy and anti-American Trump’s stance is, we need some historical context.

The United States of America is credited as the very first time in the recorded history of the world a peaceful, election-based transfer of political power of the premier from one political party to another. The entire world watched as America’s election of 1800 became a bitter and ugly fight between incumbent President John Adams and challenger and fellow founding father Thomas Jefferson. People in Europe, who lived under monarchies and theocracies for centuries, assumed this would be the point where America’s experiment with democracy would fail. But when President Adams lost and peacefully conceded total and complete power to Jefferson, it placed the rest of the world is disbelief, and led as an example for every election that followed.

(Side note, I’m a fan of Roman history and there were many instances where individuals were made dictator, usually to help stop an invading group, and then peacefully stepped down when their term as dictator was up. It was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus who first began this tradition, who many statesmen modeled themselves after including George Washington who insisted his paintings and sculptures were to be inspired from those of Cincinnatus.)

2000 Election

Many of Trump’s surrogates have pointed to the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore as a recent example of one candidate not conceding to another.

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “Al Gore had already conceded the election to George W. Bush in 2000, Chris, we remember the night well. And then he called to retract his concession, and it went on for six weeks, it went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”

But what Conway and the other supports are deceitfully neglecting to mention is in 2000, we had a perilously close popular vote in the state of Florida which triggered an automatic machine recount of ballots in the state. Only after that recount showed the race even closer than it was previously—just 327 votes separated the two candidates out of 6 million votes total across the state—did Gore opt to pursue a hand recount in four counties, a right granted to him by Florida law.

The day after the Supreme Court ordered the state of Florida to stop its recount of ballots on December 12, 2000, Al Gore conceded the race and called George W. Bush to congratulate him on his victory.

This is absolutely and unequivocally nothing like Trump refusing to accept the results of the election should he lose.

Media

Trump Pushes Fear of Non-Existent Partial Birth Abortions

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In the final presidential debate, Donald Trump said he supports the federal ban on “partial-birth” abortion because, under the procedure:

“You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day.”

He added that this can happen “as late as one or two or three or four days prior to birth.”

(h/t NPR)

Reality

However this does not happen.

Partial birth abortions is a non-medical term the pro-life lobby National Right to Life Committee made up in the ’90s for a procedure that was outlawed in 2003 by the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, signed by President George W. Bush.

The law banned the procedure, imposing a fine and imprisonment for any physician who “knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus.” The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in 2007.

Trump’s erroneous claim garnered widespread criticism, as medical professionals and others explained that there is no such thing as an “abortion” at nine months.

Some 91 percent of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Only 1.3 percent of abortions happen at or after 21 weeks after conception. Of those, the vast majority happen before 24 weeks. Under the current federal ban, a dilation and extraction (D&X), or intact dilation and evacuation (D&E) — what opponents call “partial-birth” abortion — is still allowed if the life of the mother is at stake, which his guaranteed under Row vs. Wade. Still, very few providers perform it and the exact number of procedures is not known, but it’s believed to be small.

That’s because, along with the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, 19 states have their own such bans, while 43 states impose some kind of restriction on abortions later in pregnancy.

Understand that abortion is a very serious and polarizing issue to many people, but if we are to have an equally serious discussion and debate then we should be arguing the facts and realities instead of fear-based allegations, otherwise we dishonor the lives and decisions of everyone involved.

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