A resource for journalists and for shutting down your crazy uncle.
A group of students at Iowa State called Students Against Bigotry staged a protest in the parking lot of the campus’ Jack Trice Stadium. They were confronted by a group of Trump supporters who hurled racial epithets and insults, and one woman reached out and tore a student’s signs to pieces.
Plunging into a burning geopolitical conflict, Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Friday that Russia had pursued an aggressive policy in Ukraine because “there is no respect for the United States.”
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin does not respect our president whatsoever,” said Trump.
But he held back from promising more U.S. support for a nation where almost 8,000 people have been killed since April 2014, saying that it was Europe’s responsibility.
Trump’s comments, delivered via videolink, represented a slight tonal shift for the billionaire, though his policy prescriptions remained essentially unchanged. Trump has said in the past that he “would not care that much” whether or not Ukraine was allowed to join NATO. (“Whether it goes in or doesn’t go in, I wouldn’t care,” he told NBC’s Chuck Todd last month. “If it goes in, great. If it doesn’t go in, great.”)
But on Friday, he was addressing an international conference whose official purpose is to “develop strategies for Ukraine and Wider Europe and promote Ukraine’s European integration” — a gathering that was itself a refugee from Crimea, where it was held for a decade before being displaced by Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. His language reflected the audience.
“With respect to the Ukraine, people here have to band together from other parts of Europe to help,” Trump said. “Whether it’s Germany or other of the countries, I don’t think you’re getting the support you need.”
The remarks were consistent with his previous comments that the crisis in Ukraine is a European problem, and that the United States should avoid becoming involved in addressing the situation. “I don’t like what’s happening with Ukraine,” he said on Meet the Press in August. “But that’s really a problem that affects Europe a lot more than it affects us. And they should be leading some of this charge.”
His NATO support has long been colored by his view that it gives European countries a pathway to place the burden of international responsibility on the United States. In his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” Trump wrote that “their conflicts are not worth American lives. Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.”
(h/t The Washington Post)
First we require a little context.
Ukraine gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has since veered between seeking closer integration with Western Europe and being drawn into the orbit of Russia, which sees its interests as threatened by a Western-leaning Ukraine.
During this time however, Russians never thought of Ukrainians as a separate entity from them, but considered them as fellow Russians. And Moscow loved having a pro-Russian country acting as a buffer between Russia and western NATO countries.
However inside Ukraine massive corruption was the status quo, from the bottom of the government to the very top.
Then Ukraine became gripped by unrest when President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union in 2013. An organized political movement known as ‘Euromaidan‘ demanded closer ties with the European Union, and the ousting of Yanukovych. This movement was ultimately successful, culminating in the February 2014 revolution, which removed Yanukovych and his government. However, some people in largely Russophone eastern and southern Ukraine, the traditional bases of support for Yanukovych and his Party of the Regions, did not approve of the revolution, and began to protest in favor of closer ties with Russia. Various demonstrations were held in Crimea in favor of leaving Ukraine and accession to the Russian Federation, leading to the 2014 Crimean crisis and the continued Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
Several times Ukraine has attempted to join NATO membership, and has either been voted down from NATO members or from pro-Russian opposition in Ukraine.
One of the key foreign policy positions on both Republican and Democratic platforms was a stronger and pro-western Ukraine. That is until Donald Trump.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump has taken a very pro-Russian stance on Ukraine.
After speaking to a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, Donald Trump sparked condemnation for remarks he made about the appearance of Carly Fiorina, a rival presidential candidate.
Look at that face, Would anyone vote for that?
Can you imagine that, the face of our next next president? I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?
Fiorina’s face would not be a good reason to not vote for her.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/trump-seriously-20150909?page=13
Donald Trump stumbled when asked about the heads of major terrorist organizations on Thursday and then lashed out at what he called a “gotcha question.”
Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, blasted conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview and said it is “ridiculous” to be questioned about who leads Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Nusra and ISIS.
“I think it’s ridiculous. I’ll have, I’m a delegator. I find great people. I find absolutely great people, and I’ll find them in our armed services, and I find absolutely great people,” Trump said.
Trump sought to downplay the importance of knowing who controls the terror groups. He suggested that those leaders — some of whom have led their groups for years — would likely no longer be in power by the time he would reach the White House.
“As far as the individual players, of course I don’t know them. I’ve never met them. I haven’t been, you know, in a position to meet them. If, if they’re still there, which is unlikely in many cases, but if they’re still there, I will know them better than I know you,” Trump told Hewitt.
During the interview, Hewitt said he didn’t mean to be asking Trump “gotcha questions” – but the front-running Republican candidate was having none of it.
“Well, that is a gotcha question, you know, when you’re asking me whose running this, this, this,” Trump said.
Clearly not knowing simple details about the middle east shows how unprepared and inexperienced Donald Trump is for the Presidency.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/03/politics/donald-trump-gotcha-question-terrorist-leaders-hugh-hewitt/
In criticizing the Iran deal as one of the “worst contracts” he would have to inherit as president, Trump has also incorrectly said that the agreement includes a stipulation that the United States would have to fight Israel in defense of the Iranians.
But there is a clause in there that people are not even talking about that we’re supposed to essentially come to their defense, the Iranian’s defense, and if Israel attacks, you know, where are we? Well, believe me, that will never happen. But how do they agree to things like this? We have a horrible contract. But we do have a contract.
The State Department disputed Trump’s characterization of the deal’s Section 10 of Annex III.
“This provision of the [agreement] is designed to help bring Iran’s nuclear security and safety practices in line with those used by other nuclear programs around the world,” said Marie Harf, Secretary of State John Kerry’s senior communications adviser, during a CNN fact check.
“The IAEA provides this kind of training routinely, as it is in the interest of all countries that nuclear material be safeguarded from theft and terrorist attacks — the types of ‘sabotage’ in question. This would be the focus of any such assistance by the P5+1 or other states,” she noted. “Nevertheless, this provision does not commit any country to engage in this kind of routine nuclear security cooperation, and it is absurd to suggest it [commits] anyone to ‘defend’ Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
A top security guard for Donald Trump smacked a protester in the face after the man chased him for snatching a banner Thursday, video shows.
The guard grabbed the blue sign that said “Trump: Make America Racist Again” — a play on the billionaire’s campaign motto — outside a press conference on the Donald’s new pledge of loyalty to the Republican Party, NY1 Noticias video shows.
Demonstrator Efrain Galicia ran after Schiller and appeared to reach for the banner and grab the guard from behind. Within seconds, the guard turned around and whacked him in the face with an open hand as a scrum of reporters snapped photos.
Galicia stumbled as another guard tried to restrain him, appearing to briefly put him in a stranglehold. Galicia fought back, grabbing at the second guard’s arms before the two yelled at each other outside Trump Tower.
A source familiar with the Trump campaign identified the first guard as Keith Schiller, Trump’s director of security and longtime bodyguard.
After the 10-second tussle, Galicia told reporters the guards are “just acting like their boss.”
“This man thinks he can do whatever he wants in this country, and we’re going to stop him,” Galicia said in Spanish.
An attorney for Galicia said he is exploring all “legal remedies that may be available” as Schiller appeared to “attempt to suppress free speech and the growing public criticism of the Trump campaign.”
“The video in a sense speaks for itself,” Benjamin Dictor told the Daily News Friday. “The actions were just exceedingly aggressive especially given the fact that demonstrators were on a public sidewalk speaking out about issues of public concern.”
(h/t NY Daily News)
On 8/21/2018 a New York State judge has shot down an effort by President Donald Trump to dismiss a lawsuit against his private security guards for allegedly roughing up demonstrators who were protesting outside of Trump Tower months after he announced his presidential run.
The New York Law Journal reports that Bronx Supreme Court Justice Fernando Tapia on Tuesday declined to dismiss the suit filed by protesters who claim they were roughed up by the president’s security team back in 2015.
Specifically, Tapia said that Trump himself “authorized and condoned” his security guards to rough up the protesters, and he specifically cited the president’s statement that “maybe they deserved to be roughed up” on the grounds that “it was absolutely disgusting” what the protesters were doing.
The lawsuit was filed by five Latino activists who claim that they were roughed up by longtime Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller and two other men who were employed as part of the then-candidate’s security personnel.
According to a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump once told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that her husband, real-estate mogul Donald Trump, now a leading Republican presidential candidate, kept a book of Hitler’s speeches near his bed.
“Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed … Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist,” Marie Brenner wrote.
When Brenner asked Trump about how he came to possess Hitler’s speeches, “Trump hesitated” and then said, “Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember,” Brenner reportedly replied.
Trump then recalled, “Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of ‘Mein Kampf,’ and he’s a Jew.”
Brenner added that Davis did acknowledge that he gave Trump a book about Hitler.
“But it was ‘My New Order,’ Hitler’s speeches, not ‘Mein Kampf,'” Davis reportedly said. “I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”
After Trump and Brenner changed topics, Trump returned to the subject and reportedly said, “If, I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
Trump confirmed he owned the book but denies ever reading it. Until evidence is presented that proves he read the book or takes cues from it then this is as far as the story goes.
However let me just add this. There should only be 2 valid reasons why you should own a copy of Hitler’s “My New Order”:
This is purely hypothetical, but if my good friend gave me a copy of a book authored by Hitler, I would not keep it easily accessible in cabinet next to my bed. Instead I would put it in the trash or at least in a box in the attic should the occasion arise that my friend asks me if I still have the book, to which I can go to the attic, pull out the book, show it to my friend, tell him that it sucks, and ask him why is he still my friend?
Trump first draws a link between Asians and theft then mocks Asian negotiators with racist broken-english impression at a rally in Iowa.
When these people walk in the room, they don’t say, ‘Oh, hello! How’s the weather? It’s so beautiful outside. Isn’t it lovely? How are the Yankees doing? Oh they’re doing wonderful. Great. They say, ‘We want deal!’
Media
Links
http://www.ibtimes.com/donald-trump-mocks-asians-broken-english-accent-during-campaign-rally-iowa-video-2069216
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he will stop eating Oreos, a decision he came to after Nabisco parent company Mondelez International, announced last month that it’s replacing production lines in Chicago with new ones at a plant in Salinas, Mexico.
“I’m never eating Oreos again,” Trump said on Tuesday, reaffirming statements he first made last week at a rally in Alabama, where he said, “Mexico is the new China . . . I love Oreos. I will never eat them again. Nabisco closes the plant in Chicago and they are moving the plant to Mexico.”
Mondelez is not closing the Chicago plant, but it is cutting 600 jobs there as a result of the new investment in Mexico, the Associated Press reports. A spokesperson for Mondelez told the Associated Press that the company’s new investment of $130 million in Mexico is an effort to save production costs, as the new lines in Mexico will cost $46 million less per year than those in Chicago. Only two of the four new lines will make Oreo cookies.
Jobs moving out of the United States has been one of Trump’s signature positions and has struck a cord with his supporters. The irony is not lost that voters believe that a billionaire businessman would save them from billionaire businessmen.
Questions from Univision reporter Jorge Ramos became heated with Trump on his positions on birthright citizenship and a wall with Mexico. After Ramos continued to ask questions Trump command he “Sit down” and “Go back to Univision” then motioned to bodyguards to escort the well-respected reporter out of the conference.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/25/politics/donald-trump-megyn-kelly-iowa-rally/
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/30/media/donald-trump-jorge-ramos-interview/