GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump opened the 4th primetime GOP debate by suggesting that Americans’ wages are “too high” and that it’s part of a problem with the country’s competitiveness.
“Taxes too high, wages too high,” he said, responding to a question about New York state’s decision to raise the minimum wage for certain workers to $15. “We’re not going to be able to compete against the world.”
Trump rejected calls to raise the minimum wage. His rival for pole position in the Republican primary, Ben Carson, agreed.
“I would not raise it specifically because I’m interested in making sure that people are able to enter the job market and take advantage of opportunities,” he said.
Is anyone really surprised that a billionaire businessman wants to keep wages low?
According to the Pew Research Center, real wages are not at all high and instead have been stagnant for decades. This means we’ve seen bigger paychecks, but that paycheck goes far less than before when buying stuff.
Donald Trump risked accusations of unchivalrous behavior at the Republican presidential debate Tuesday, asking his fellow candidates why former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina kept “interrupting everybody.”
It all began when the real estate bigwig answered a question on foreign policy, saying he had a good personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I got to know him very well because we were both on 60 Minutes,” he said. “If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, 100%.”
Fiorina responded with a shot at the front runner’s foreign policy chops, saying she had also met the Russian leader, “not in a green room for a show, but in a private meeting.”
Apparently stung, Trump cut in as Fiorina competed with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul for time on a foreign policy answer. “Why does she keep interrupting everybody?” he said, to nervous laughter and some boos from the audience.
Trump jumped into a fray that he wasn’t even a part of to make an observation that could be considered sexists and misogynist. Fiorina wasn’t the only one interrupting but yet he singled her out for criticism.
Donald Trump defended his vision for immigration policy at the November 10th GOP debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by alluding to a plan implemented by President Dwight Eisenhower’s that supposedly deported more than a million illegal immigrants during the 1950s.
Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him. Moved a 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border. They came back. Moved them again beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south. They never came back.
Trump did not mention the disparaging name of the program, which was called “Operation Wetback.” Under the program, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service removed undocumented Mexican immigrants from the Southwest and sent them back to Mexico.
The operation began in Texas in 1954 and was a “quasi-military operation of search and seizure of all unauthorized immigrants,” according to the Texas State Historical Association. The association, however, says it’s difficult to estimate how many people were actually forced to leave the country under the operation.
At the time, the government said it had deported as many as 1.3 million illegal immigrants, but analysts have said this number is exaggerated and some have said the total number of people deported was a gradual result of other programs.
It is believed, however, that Eisenhower’s operation was the opposite of humane. A story in the Washington Post says that Mexicans were dumped in hot, obscure destinations in Mexico “with few possessions and no way of getting home,” in order to discourage them from returning to the U.S.
As we pointed out in our policy review of Trump’s Immigration Reform, mass deportations would involve rounding up every undocumented person and forcibly removing them from the country. What Trump is advocating here, the forced removal of a portion of a population with the same national heritage from an area, already has a name, it’s called “ethnic cleansing” and it is not seen as a positive and moral thing. On top of the horrific crimes against humanity being proposed, what Trump also fails to mention here is the cost. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told lawmakers that it costs about $12,500 to deport one immigrant from the United States. Multiply that by 11.3 million, and you get $141.3 billion. Not great for the deficit, smaller government, or freedoms.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday night retweeted — and promptly deleted — a collage attacking his GOP primary rival Jeb Bush that featured a swastika.
The tweet, which Trump manually reposted, was quickly circulated by various Twitter users and reporters, who took screenshots of the image and reposted them.
In addition to a swastika, the collage also used Hispanic stereotypes to promote an anti-immigration reform agenda. The campaign said Wednesday morning that Trump did not realize the image included offensive imagery.
“This was retweeted by Mr. Trump like hundreds of others. He did not see the accompanying image and the retweet has since been deleted,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an e-mail.
Last month Trump’s account tweeted a comment disparaging Iowa voters who support his rival Ben Carson, insinuating they lacked intelligence. In July, Trump’s account tweeted a graphic that inadvertently used images of Nazi soldiers. In both instances, Trump said that an intern had committed the error.
Donald Trump took credit for Ford Motor Co. deciding not to build new plants in Mexico. The only issue with that: Ford is going ahead with its plans to build south of the border.
Trump first retweeted a link to an article with the headline, “Trump successfully pressures Ford to move Mexican plant to Ohio.”
The article cited a CNNMoney report (with no link) that Ford is relocating its facility from Mexico to Youngstown, Ohio. However a spokeswoman for the company told The Washington Post that Ford does not have any plans for a plant in Youngstown.
In his perceived triumph, Trump took to Twitter to take sole credit for creating American jobs and looking out for the little guy.
Word is that Ford Motor, because of my constant badgering at packed events, is going to cancel their deal to go to Mexico and stay in U.S.
Trump then followed up with another grammatically incorrect tweet asking a rhetorical question, dismissed that question, and finally asking us to imagine a world where that rhetorical question could actually be factual:
Do you think I will get credit for keeping Ford in U.S. Who cares, my supporters know the truth. Think what can be done as president!
Ford never had plans to build a new plant in Ohio and Ford never changed their expansion plans to continue building a plant south of the border. Ford did have plans to shift assembly of some of their truck lines to their existing Avon Lake, Ohio plant. But that decision was made in 2011, a full 4 years before any candidate announced their intention to run for U.S. president.
As Northeast Ohio Media Group reported, the Donald Trump appears to have confused the automobile manufacturer’s expansion plan south of the border with the company’s decision to start production of medium-duty pickups that had previously been manufactured in Mexico. Production began four years after Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another presidential candidate, pushed tax incentives that included breaks for Ford’s plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, about 90 miles from Youngstown.
Donald Trump believes the world would be much better off if ruthless dictators like Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi were still in power.
“100%,” Trump replied when asked that question in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that aired Sunday on “State of the Union.”
Trump said he believes Iraq and Libya, the respective countries of the since-deceased dictators, would be less fractured and promote a more stable Middle East if the two had not been forcefully pushed out of power. Hussein fell from power following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Gadhafi was ousted following violent civil strife in 2011 that ultimately drew a NATO-led military intervention.
“I mean, look at Libya. Look at Iraq. Iraq used to be no terrorists. He (Hussein) would kill the terrorists immediately, which is like now it’s the Harvard of terrorism,” Trump said. “If you look at Iraq from years ago, I’m not saying he was a nice guy, he was a horrible guy, but it was a lot better than it is right now. Right now, Iraq is a training ground for terrorists. Right now Libya, nobody even knows Libya, frankly there is no Iraq and there is no Libya. It’s all broken up. They have no control. Nobody knows what’s going on.”
Both Gadhafi and Hussein committed atrocities against their own people and were among the world’s worst human rights abusers. NATO decided to intervene in Libya as Gadhafi appeared poised to commit a genocidal-like massacre.
But Trump said human rights abuses continue to plague Libya and Iraq and claimed, “They’re worse than they ever were.”
“People are getting their heads chopped off, they’re being drowned. Right now, they are far worse than they were, ever, under Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi,” he said.
What Trump is praising Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi for here isn’t justice against the evil terrorists. Saddam Hussein used this tactic of labeling political dissenters and ethnic minorities as “terrorists” and disappearing them, many times without trial. This is a violation of human rights, crimes against humanity, and murder. Hussein’s atrocities are all documented at organizations like Human Rights Watch.
So this is what Trump is praising when comparing Hussein against our “weak” justice system. And if applied in the United States it would be a clear violation of the 5th and 14th amendments of the Constitution should it be applied here in the United States.
Ariel Rojas wasn’t the only protester inside Donald Trump’s campaign event at Trump National Miami Doral Resort on Friday. At least three separate groups could be heard interrupting Trump and chanting pro-immigration messages.
Rojas’ group, comprised of eight Florida International University students, each holding up one letter, spelling out the word E-Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y.
Rojas, a senior at FIU, was holding up the letter Q before, he said, the Trump supporters standing in front of him turned around, grabbed their signs, and tore them to pieces.
“There were some choice moments of irony,’ said Rojas, whose friend reported seeing a Trump supporter whacking a protester with a sign that read “The Silent Majority Supports Trump.”
A man can be seen dragging Rojas by the collar of his shirt before falling to the ground. While on the ground Rojas gets kicked by the man who was dragging him.
According to the campaign, the man who dragged Rojas is not a Trump campaign staffer or an employee of the Trump Resort, he was “merely an attendee” at the rally.
Once outside the event, Rojas and his fellow protesters were escorted off the premises by police.
A series of protests interrupted Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s Miami campaign speech.
The pro-immigration demonstrators stopped Trump three times, before being shouted down by Trump supporters and removed from the facility.
“You can get them out, just don’t hurt them,” Trump advised to building security at Trump National Doral Miami, a resort the candidate owns.
He insisted the interruptions didn’t bother him, saying that “that’s what freedom of speech is about.”
“Isn’t this more fun than having like a normal deal?” the billionaire told his supporters. “This is more fun, right?”
But after several interruptions, he became peeved, noting that he had been polite to the first two disruptors.
See the first group, I was nice. Oh, take your time. The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent, and the fourth group, I’ll say, ‘Get the hell out of here!’
Reality
Threats are not protected free speech by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Comments like these add to the growing evidence that Donald Trump supports and condones violence against people with different ideas.
Reporters from Fusion were denied entry to a Donald Trump campaign rally in Doral, Florida Friday evening due to—in the words of a top campaign staffer— Mr. Trump’s pending lawsuit against Univision. Fusion is jointly owned by Univision and Disney/ABC.
Harvard economics major Joseph Choe addressed Donald Trump during a question and answer session, asking the candidate about statements he had made over the summer in which he asserted that South Korea takes advantage of the United States.
Before Choe, an Asian-American, could finish his question, Trump interrupted the man asking, “Are you from South Korea?”
“I’m not. I was born in Texas, raised in Colorado,” Choe responded.
The GOP presidential candidate shrugged as awkward laughter from the audience escalated into full-blown cheering for Choe.
“No matter where I’m from, I like to get my facts straight, and I wanted to tell you that that’s not true. South Korea paid $861 million,” Choe said before Trump cut him off again.
Reality
Trump’s question represents an all too common experience for Asian-Americans, who researchers say are stereotyped as the “perpetual foreigners.”
“[E]thnic minorities, especially Asian Americans and Latino/as, are often asked … questions like, ‘No, where are you really from?’ or ‘I meant, where are you originally from?’” a San Diego State University study explained. The implicit message, the study said, is that “they do not share the American identity or have in-group status.”
Or perhaps in this case, the right to question Donald Trump.
Just for the record, Trump is also wrong about South Korea not paying anything toward the costs of U.S. military support.
