An adviser to Donald Trump on veterans issues said that Hillary Clinton should be put in a firing line and shot for treason.
New Hampshire state representative Al Baldasaro, who is also a Trump delegate from the state and has appeared with Trump at campaign events, made the comments on the Jeff Kuhner Show.
“I’m a veteran that went to Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I’m also a father who sent a son to war, to Iraq, as a Marine Corps helicopter avionics technician. Hillary Clinton to me is the Jane Fonda of the Vietnam,” he said. “She is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi. She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something’s wrong there.”
“This whole thing disgusts me, Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason,” he added.
Baldasaro has spoken at several Trump events, introducing Trump multiple times, including at an event in late May where he admonished the media for focusing on questions over Trump’s donations to veteran’s charities.
He later added in the radio interview that Clinton was a “piece of garbage.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Boston Globe followed up with Baldasaro after BuzzFeed News’ report and he said he stood by his comments.
Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks told NH1 News, “We’re incredibly grateful for his support, but we don’t agree with his comments.”
As first reported by The Daily Beast, the Secret Service is investigating Baldasaro’s comments.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation,” a Secret Service spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News.
Republicans lead one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history. In June, 2016, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report, finding no evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.
While there is no dispute that security was inadequate in Benghazi and that the State Department failed to respond to all requests for security, the total number of security requests cited by Mr. Baldasaro and others in the right-wing media has long been debunked as misleading.
Accusing rival Hillary Clinton of corruption, Donald Trump sent a controversial tweet Saturday morning, invoking a six-pointed Star of David — a well-known Jewish symbol — overlaid on piles of money.
The graphic appears to be photoshopped from several different elements, including a Fox News poll that found 58 percent of voters believed Clinton to be “corrupt.” It’s juxtaposed against a photo of Clinton and a riff off her own campaign statement about making history as the first presumptive female nominee of a major party.
Next to Clinton is a red six-pointed Star of David with text reading “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” Hundred-dollar bills are scattered in the photo behind her.
It raised the eyebrows of more than a few Twitter users, several bluntly called the tweet anti-Semitic.
Trump later tweeted an amended version of the graphic, nearly two hours after the Twitter firestorm began. The latest version uses a red circle in place of the Star of David:
Trump has defended against accusations of anti-semitism and racism before.
When Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition in December 2015, he tried to relate to the crowd by invoking the stereotype of Jews as talented and cunning business-people.
“I’m a negotiator, like you folks”
And when he said:
“You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” he said, adding that, “you want to control your own politician.”
Donald Trump insisted Thursday that the private email server Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state was hacked, but the presumptive Republican nominee couldn’t say where he learned that information.
“But is there any evidence that it was hacked other than — routine phishing –” “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt asked Trump in a sit-down interview that will air Thursday on “NBC Nightly News.”
“I think I read that,” Trump said. “And I heard it, and somebody–”
“Where?” Holt pressed him.
“—that also gave me that information. I will report back to you. I’ll give it to you,” Trump said.
U.S. officials have told NBC News that there is no evidence that hackers penetrated the server, although there is evidence of phishing attempts. Clinton’s campaign says that there is no evidence that her private server was ever hacked.
Trump’s remark comes a day after he argued that Clinton’s private server left her vulnerable to blackmail if she were president.
“Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments — perhaps even by her financial backers in Communist China — putting all of America in danger,” Trump said Wednesday in a speech that slammed Clinton. “Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted. While we may not know what is in those deleted emails, our enemies probably do. So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be president of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency.”
NBC News fact-checked some of Trump’s claims in the speech.
Trump’s campaign offered alleged examples of attempted hacks from China and other countries in a published version of his Wednesday address, but none of the cited reports say that Clinton’s server was ever successfully penetrated as the candidate argued.
Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday hit Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on the topic of faith, telling a group of evangelical leaders who represent a crucial Republican constituency that “there’s nothing out there” regarding the former secretary of state’s religion.
Clinton is, in fact, a practicing Methodist who knows her Bible well and speaks often about the important role faith plays in her life. In her books, and occasionally on the campaign trail, Clinton has talked openly of how she turned to faith in times of hardship, including during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the death of her best friend, Diane Blair, in 2000.
Trump, on the other hand, identifies as a Presbyterian but has struggled to demonstrate basic Biblical literacy this election cycle. Last year, Trump’s Manhattan church, Marble Collegiate, released a statement saying the twice-divorced real estate developer was not an “active member.” Earlier this year Trump mispronounced a book of the Bible and cursed — twice — during an address at Liberty University, the world’s largest Christian college.
Still, attacking other people’s faith appears to be a favorite move in Trump’s playbook.
The pattern looks to have begun with President Obama. In questioning Clinton’s religious convictions Tuesday, Trump added an attack of the president, saying “it’s going to be an extension of Obama, but it’s going to be worse.” But even before Trump launched his White House bid a year ago, he was known to regularly cast doubt on Obama’s Christianity.
“He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim,” Trump told Fox News in 2011. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that.”
Five years later, the questions haven’t stopped. As recently as February, Trump tweeted that Obama might have attended Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral “if it were held in a Mosque.” When pressed for clarification, however, Trump insisted he wasn’t implying anything.
I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque? Very sad that he did not go!
Since running for president, Trump has also raised similar faith-based concerns about his fellow Republicans.
In October, retired neurosurgeon and devout Seventh-day Adventist Ben Carson was the target: “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness,” Trump told voters in Florida. “I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about.”
In January, lifelong Southern Baptist and son of a pastor Ted Cruz was in the crosshairs: “Just remember this,” Trump said, “in all fairness, to the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, okay?”
Even people who aren’t running for president appear to be fair game for Trump’s tests of piety. Speaking at a rally in March, Trump delivered a signature takedown of one of his most vocal critics, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, calling him a “choke artist” for failing to defeat Obama in 2012. Trump then turned to Romney’s faith.
“Are you sure he’s a Mormon?” Trump asked the crowd in Salt Lake City, home to both Romney and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ headquarters. “Are we sure?”
Donald Trump says there is nothing out there about Hillary Clinton’s religion. Except if you Google “hillary clinton religion” you will indeed get things out there about Hillary Clinton’s religion.
Hillary Clinton gave a speech on foreign policy that was a direct attack on Donald Trump, whose own foreign policy knowledge is lacking in such a way that CNN has now chosen to fact-check in real time so that viewers can see when he reneges on something he’s said, like his belief that Japan should have nukes.
Trump hasn’t taken well to her speech. He has attacked those who lauded it and gone after Clinton, too. Just as he did yesterday when he tried to claim that he never spoke out in favor of Japan getting its own nuclear arsenal, he tried to insist that everything Clinton said about him in her speech was a lie.
In Crooked Hillary's telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!
She responded with a link to her site, The Briefing. That link leads to a quote-by-quote breakdown of her speech. Each assertion made about Trump’s beliefs is backed up with a link to the interview or press conference during which he said it.
From saying he has no issue with abandoning our allies in NATO to the direct quote in which he insisted he knows more about ISIS than America’s own military generals do, the takedown is thorough and scathing.
Donald’s twitter response to Clinton’s evisceration of his foreign policy was largely seen as massive disappointment. Many pundits waited eagerly to see how he would respond, how he would defend his positions, and were left with a few poorly-spelled tweets attacking her for using a “telepromter.” Ironically, a few days later Donald Trump himself turned to a teleprompter for his primary victory.
So we wanted to take the time and fact-check both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
1. “This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia.”
2. “This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO, the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home.”
TRUE. In a March 30 town hall on MSNBC, Trump repeatedly suggested he will threaten NATO countries to bear a bigger burden, ultimately saying “If we have to walk, we have to walk.”
CHRIS MATTHEWS: We don’t need NATO?
TRUMP: Do you think — no, we don’t really need NATO in its current form. NATO is obsolete, and we’re spending disproportionately…
MATTHEWS: How do you walk from NATO, The Middle East, North Asia, China, all these relationships? Just drop them all?
TRUMP: Look, NATO is…
MATTHEWS: We have old deals we have to stick with.
TRUMP: … is 68 years old.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
TRUMP: OK, you have countries that are getting a free ride. You have countries that benefit from NATO much more than we do. We don’t benefit that much from NATO….Why aren’t they reimbursing us? Why aren’t they paying a good portion of the costs?
MATTHEWS: Well, that’s fine. It’s a good argument if you can get it. But if the alternative is we walk…
TRUMP: And we’ll get it, I’ll get it, I’ll get it. I’m the messenger.
MATTHEWS: If the alternative is we walk…
TRUMP:If we have to walk, we have to walk.
Comments start around the 6:30 mark.
3. “He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008.”
TRUE. In an interview on CNBC, Donald Trump broke with tired clichés about the evils of federal debt accumulation. “I am the king of debt,” he said. “I love debt. I love playing with it.”
I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal,” Trump said. “And if the economy was good, it was good. So therefore, you can’t lose.
This idea would indeed cause a global financial crisis. By suggesting an unorthodox approach towards cutting the national debt… not paying it then renegotiate terms. Such a renegotiation risks creating financial turmoil because U.S. Treasuries are considered the safest assets on the planet and a major benchmark for valuing other securities. Calling into question their safety could cause borrowing rates to rise and create confusion in the markets.
Trump later said the media misunderstood his comments. However while Trump did not say the word ‘default’ he explained the exact definition of the word default in his proposal. And his new answer to print money can lead to higher inflation and was almost just as bad of an idea.
4. “He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture.”
TRUE. During a campaign event at the Sun City retirement community on February 17, 2016, Donald Trump said that he supports waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques because “torture works” in the questioning of terrorists.
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” Trump said. “Okay, folks? Torture — you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”
5. “He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or our admirals, our ambassadors, and other high officials, because he has quote, ‘a very good brain.’”
TRUE. Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded:
“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
“I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are,” Trump said. “But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff.”
Then as evidence, Trump claimed he had predicted the rise of Osama bin Laden, a statement for which was a total and absolute lie.
6. “He says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.”
TRUE. And complete and total nonsense.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
7. “He has the gall to say that prisoners of war like John McCain aren’t heroes.”
TRUE. At the Iowa Family Leadership Summit in July 2015, when moderator Frank Luntz brought up Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Donald Trump said:
He’s not a war hero.
Then went on to say.
He’s a war hero ’cause he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK? Perhaps he’s a war hero, but right now he’s said some very bad things about a lot of people.
Trump caught flack from every direction but refused to change his stance on McCain. When asked by ABC News whether he owes McCain an apology, Trump said:
No, not at all.
Then continued:
People that were not captured that went in and fought, nobody talks about them. Those are heroes also.
Later when confronted with his comments about McCain by a veteran and supporter at a rally, Trump flatly lied that he never made those comments.
8. “He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin…” and picks fights with our friends, including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico, and the Pope.”
“I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an ‘A,’ and our president is not doing so well. They did not look good together.”
9. “and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister…”
TRUE. On Good Morning Britain in May 2016, Trump was asked about comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the U.K.’s Conservative Party, who said that Trump’s suggestion Muslims should be barred from the United States was “divisive, stupid and wrong.”
“It looks like we’re not going to have a very good relationship,” if he were to win the presidential election in November.
“I think they’re very rude statements and frankly, tell him, I will remember those statements. They’re very nasty statements.”
11. the German chancellor…
TRUE. Donald Trump told Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon that he was highly critical of Germany’s Angela Merkel saying she is “a catastrophic leader” and that “she’ll be out if they don’t have a revolution.”
Everyone thought she was a really great leader and now she’s turned out to be this catastrophic leader. And she’ll be out if they don’t have a revolution.
12. the president of Mexico…
TRUE. Donald Trump sparked outrage among Mexicans and Latinos over comments he made when he kicked off his Presidential bid when he claimed Mexico sending its “rapists” and criminals to the U.S. and calling for a human-proof wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to keep them out.
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Mexican President Pena Nieto attacked the “populism” of the Trump campaign, which he said sought to put forward “very easy, simple solutions to problems that are obviously not that easy to solve,” and then compared Trump to Hitler:
“And there have been episodes in human history, unfortunately, where these expressions of this strident rhetoric have only led to very ominous situations in the history of humanity. That’s how Mussolini got in, that’s how Hitler got in, they took advantage of a situation, a problem perhaps, which humanity was going through at the time, after an economic crisis. And I think what (they) put forward ended up at what we know today from history, in global conflagration. We don’t want that happening anywhere in the world”
13. and the Pope.
TRUE. Trump faulted Pope Francis for planning to visit the Mexican border to pray with migrants:
I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico. I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is. They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.
Pope Francis then made the observation that that Mr. Trump “is not Christian” in proposing deportations and a wall with Mexico.
Donald Trump responded saying Francis’ criticisms were “disgraceful” and “unbelievable,” said the pontiff will “wish and pray” that the real estate mogul were President “if and when the Vatican is attacked, and he contended that the Mexican government had hoodwinked the pope into criticizing him.
14. “He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.”
I know Russia well. I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, Miss Universe contest, which was a big, big, incredible event. An incredible success.
There’s no such thing as a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump will not believe.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump called the circumstances surrounding former Clinton Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster’s death in 1993 “very fishy,” saying the aide had “intimate knowledge” of events surrounding the Clintons.
I don’t bring [Foster] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.
Donald Trump didn’t want to discuss the Foster conspiracy theory… by discussing it? How is that statement not dishonest?
Vince Foster’s death in 1993 was concluded to have been a suicide by inquiries/investigations conducted by the United States Park Police, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the United States Congress, Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske, CNN, and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who was not a fan of the Clintons. The idea that Vincent Foster’s death was anything other than a suicide flies in the face of all available evidence, including Foster’s own suicide note. But yet this never stops wingnut conspiracy sites like WND, Breibart, and The Daily Mail from keeping fiction alive.
Mr. Trump seemed to relish injecting gender politics into the race as he looks ahead to a potential general election matchup with Mrs. Clinton. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” he claimed that women do not like Mrs. Clinton and that he has every right to attack her if she plays up the fact that she would be the first female United States president.
It’s not sexist. It’s true. It’s just a very, very true statement. If she were a man, she’d get 5 percent. She’s a bad candidate. She’s a flawed candidate. She’s not going to do very well in the election, and I look forward to showing that.
And again on Morning Joe on MSNBC he repeated the claim. Remarking that he was still “recovering” from Clinton’s “shouting,” an increasingly high-energy Trump remarked:
I know a lot of people would say you can’t say that about a woman, because of course a woman doesn’t shout. The way she shouted that message was not — that’s the way she said it, and I guess I’ll have to get used to a lot of that over the next four or five months.
Mrs. Clinton addressed Mr. Trump’s new line of attack during her victory speech on Tuesday night, telling voters to “deal me in” when it comes to Mr. Trump’s suggestions that he is trying to capitalize on her gender and argued that she would be the best candidate to defend women’s rights on health and in the workplace.
Reality
The statement that Hillary Clinton plays the woman card is one that Trump has repeatedmanytimesover the course of his campaign.
A USA Today-Suffolk University poll released this week found that 66 percent of likely female voters nationwide have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 48 percent who have a negative opinion of Clinton. And women are far more likely to have intensely negative views of Trump. A Washington Post-ABC News poll earlier this month found that 64 percent of women feel “strongly unfavorable” toward Trump, compared with 41 percent of men.
While celebrating sweeping victories in five primaries Tuesday night, Donald Trump mocked the qualifications of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and suggested she was playing “the women’s card” to her advantage in the presidential race.
“Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the women’s card,” Trump said during a news conference at Trump Tower. “And the beautiful thing is, women don’t like her.”
The statement that Hillary Clinton plays the woman card is one that Trump has repeatedmanytimesover the course of his campaign.
A USA Today-Suffolk University poll released this week found that 66 percent of likely female voters nationwide have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 48 percent who have a negative opinion of Clinton. And women are far more likely to have intensely negative views of Trump. A Washington Post-ABC News poll earlier this month found that 64 percent of women feel “strongly unfavorable” toward Trump, compared with 41 percent of men.
The sexist and false claim was perfectly summed up by Chris Christie’s wife, Mary Pat, who stole the show with this little reaction:
Donald Trump mocked Hillary Clinton on Tuesday for barking like a dog, branding the former secretary of state a ‘joke’, and vowed he would never do so because he said he would be pilloried in the media.
“If I ever did that, I would be ridiculed all over the place. I won’t do it. I’m not going to imitate her,” Trump said during a rally in North Augusta, South Carolina. “She’s barking like a dog, and they’re saying ‘wonderful.'”
