Category: Conspiracy Theories

Trump and his crazy conspiracy theories

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

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

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

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 Calls Republicans Naïve If They Don’t Buy Into His Large Scale Voter Fraud Claims

In another early-morning tweet-rage, Donald Trump on Monday claimed widespread voter fraud was taking place before Election Day, ramping up his charges that the presidential election is being rigged.

Trump also criticized Republicans who have not backed up his claims. A number of GOP officials, including Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.), have said they are confident in the state election processes and safeguards.

(h/t The Hill, Washington Post)

Reality

The Trump campaign pointed to a 2012 Pew Center on the States study of ways to make the election system more accurate, cost-effective and efficient. At an Oct. 17 rally, Trump cited the three main findings of the speech to back up his claim that voter fraud is common across the country:

  • About 24 million (1 in every 8) voter registrations were significantly inaccurate or no longer valid because people moved, had died or were inactive voters.
  • More than 1.8 million records for people who are deceased, but whose registrations were still on voter rolls.
  • About 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state. This could happen if voters move to a new state and register to vote without notifying their former state.
  • Outdated technology, shrinking government budgets and paper-based registration systems contributed to inaccuracies and inefficiencies.

But the study does not say that these problems indicated signs of isolated or widespread voter fraud. Yet Trump used the 1.8 million figure to inaccurately claim at the rally: “More than 1.8 million deceased individuals right now are listed as voters. Oh, that’s wonderful. Well, if they’re going to vote for me, we’ll think about it, right? But I have a feeling they’re not going to vote for me. Of the 1.8 million, 1.8 million is voting for somebody else.”

The campaign pointed to three instances of voting irregularities — in Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia. But they were isolated instances that do not amount to widespread voter fraud — and do not show they are as common as he says they are.

Trump’s campaign then sent lists of nearly 300 instances of voting irregularities between 2004 and 2016. Some of the cases involved indictments and guilty pleas of actual voter fraud, where someone illegally mailed an early ballot or cast a ballot at a polling place to defraud the system.

But the lists also included unsupported allegations of fraud, investigations into potential fraud and reports of less nefarious activities, such as people voting incorrectly and voting machines malfunctioning.

Even if all 300 instances were confirmed cases of actual voter fraud, they would make up such a small portion of total ballots cast in that 12-year period that it would be preposterous to call voter fraud a widespread or a “big, big” problem.

More than 1 billion ballots were cast from 2000 through 2014. There were 31 incidents of specific, credible allegations of voter impersonation at the polls, according to research by Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, who has been tracking such data for years. So the problem that Trump is warning his voters to watch for at the polls — to make sure things are “on the up and up” — happens at the rate of 31 out of 1 billion ballots cast.

But it would be certainly nearly impossible to do something like that to tip a presidential election. We’re talking about a nationwide effort of local, state and federal election officials colluding to commit a felony. Politicians and lawyers for both major parties and every poll watcher would have to be in on it. A conspiracy so large and full of holes, only the most oblivious and illogical would think it exists.

Trump Blamed African-Americans If He Loses the Election

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump dug deeper in his dangrous efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the U.S. election, saying on Twitter on Sunday that he believed the results were being “rigged” at many polling places.

His tweet came hours after his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, said Republicans would accept the outcome of the Nov. 8 contest between Trump and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD,” Trump wrote on Twitter, in the latest of a series of comments he has made over the past several days calling into question the fairness of the election.

Trump, who is trailing Clinton in opinion polls, did not provide any evidence to back his allegations of impropriety at the voting booth.

The New York businessman, who has never held elective office, has often said the electoral process is skewed against him, including during the Republican nominating contests, when he disputed the method for winning delegates to the Republican National Convention.

His latest complaint of media bias stems from allegations by women that he groped them or made other unwanted sexual advances, after a 2005 video became public in which Trump was recorded bragging about such behavior. He apologized for the video but has denied each of the accusations.

“Election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!” Trump tweeted on Sunday, a sentiment he also expressed in posts and during rallies in Maine and New Hampshire on Saturday. The comments raised questions both from Republicans and Democrats about whether he would accept the outcome should he lose to Clinton.

Trump said after the first presidential debate in September that he would “absolutely” accept the election outcome. But a few days afterward, he told the New York Times: “We’re going to see what happens.”

He has also urged his supporters to keep an eye on voting locations to prevent a “stolen” election, which some critics interpreted as encouraging them to intimidate voters.

(h/t Reuters)

Reality

When asked for more detail about how the election will be rigged, Trump and members of his campaign have all pointed to “inner-cities” with largely African-American populations, such as Philadelphia.

Trump has called for “election observers” in these African-American communities where he hopes to place his supporters who are untrained in the election process to question individual voter’s eligibility, which many experts identify as voter intimidation.

Giuliani on Rigged Election: ‘Dead People Generally Vote for Democrats’

Top Donald Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani claimed Sunday that Democrats could steal a close election by having dead people vote in inner cities, while vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said the ticket will “absolutely accept the result of the election.”

“I’m sorry, dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans,” the former New York City mayor told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “You want me to (say) that I think the election in Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair? I would have to be a moron to say that.”

But he did say the amount of cheating would only impact extremely close races — noting, for example, if either Trump or Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania by “5 points,” the cheating he alleges would occur would be negligible and not change the outcome.

Giuliani was backing up Trump, the Republican nominee, who has repeatedly claimed on the campaign trail — without providing evidence — that his race against Clinton is being rigged.

Trump tweeted Sunday: “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD”

But Pence told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that he will accept the Election Day results.

“We will absolutely accept the result of the election,” he said. “Look, the American people will speak in an election that will culminate on November the 8. But the American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media. That’s where the sense of a rigged election goes here, Chuck.”

Tapper pushed back on Giuliani, saying even Republicans had debunked the conspiracy theories pushed online that low vote totals in Philadelphia in 2012 for Mitt Romney were the result of a rigged process.

Giuliani said as a prosecutor, he remembers an election in Chicago in which 720 supposedly dead people voted — and that 60 dead people cast ballots in his own mayor’s race.

He said elections fraud would only make a difference in a 1 to 2 percentage point races.

He also said that only Democrats do it, because it happens in inner cities.

“I can’t sit here and tell you that they don’t cheat. And I know that because they control the polling places in these areas. There are no Republicans, and it’s very hard to get people there who will challenge votes. So what they do is, they leave dead people on the rolls and then they pay people to vote as dead people, four, five, six, seven” times, Giuliani said.

“I’ve found very few situations where Republicans cheat. They don’t control the inner cities the way Democrats do. Maybe if Republicans controlled the inner cities, they’d do as much cheating as Democrats do,” he said.

Tapper said: “I think there are a lot of elections experts that would have very, very strong disagreements with you.”

Giuliani responded: “Well then they never prosecuted elections fraud.”

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and also a top Trump ally, said on ABC’s “This Week” that Trump’s concerns about election rigging are “not about election officials at the precinct level.”

However, he also urged Trump voters to monitor polling stations.

“I remember when Richard Nixon had the election stolen in 1960, and no serious historian doubts that Illinois and Texas were stolen. So to suggest that, we have, you don’t have theft in Philadelphia is to deny reality,” Gingrich said.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Rudy Giuliani has spit out so many conspiracy theories and out-right lies, he is starting to conflate them all together. So not only does he not have any evidence for the two originating conspiracy theories, he would also not have any evidence for this new one he just invented, that dead people are voting in Philadelphia and Chicago, either.

First Giuliani is claiming that dead people are voting in elections, and to this there is a kernel of truth. For example earlier this year an investigation by CBS in Los Angeles uncovered 215 instances of voter impersonation since 2004 of people who have since deceased voting in local elections. However, unlike alt-right website like Breitbart who try to blow it way out of proportion calling it ‘hundreds‘, those numbers are so low compared to the 4.8 million registered voters in Los Angeles to hardly be a concern in a county that is so deeply blue it is often a target to conservatives. And while Rudy tries to paint this as a Democrat conspiracy, keep in mind in that report while 146 of the voters were indeed Democrats, 86 were registered Republicans.

And second, ever since the 2012 election there have been internet claims of voter fraud in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where 0 votes were cast for Mitt Romney. Even Sean Hannity jumped into these waters a few times, all of which have been debunked over and over again. In the 59 divisions of Philadelphia, the average number of registered Republicans in these divisions was 17 people. The Philadelphia Inquirer sought out these voters after the election and found that many people moved, some were registered incorrectly, and others just plain didn’t vote.

Media

Trump Claims Global Jewish Bankers are Conspiring Against Him

Trump delivered a vindictive and paranoid speech Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida where he attacked his sexual assault accusers, his rival Hillary Clinton, and the media who he feels are all coordinating to smear his good name in this election, despite his own previous racist, sexist, and violent speech.

But lost in this speech was a line delivered by Trump that, unless you are member of the white supremacist alt-right movement or studied and are familiar with whackjob conspiracy theories, you wouldn’t have realized that he was also referencing a centuries old debunked conspiracy theory still widely used in anti-Semitic circles, that claims a vast global Jewish conspiracy for world domination.

Trump said:

It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities…
We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors…
This is a struggle for the survival of our nation. Believe me. And this will be our last chance to save it on November 8. Remember that.
This election will determine whether we’re a free nation, or whether we have only an illusion democracy but in are in fact controlled by a small handful of special global interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged.

At this point you may snicker and scoff at the idea of a candidate for the President of the United States from a major political party was echoing anti-Semetic conspiracy theories,  but Trump’s statement was not lost on the Jewish press, the Anti-Defamation League, and his alt-right and other white supremacist supports who are all very keenly aware of his meaning.

This article will explain to you, in very clear language, the story behind Trump’s barely coded words that directly echo one of the most ancient of all anti-Semitic libels.

The Conspiracy Theories

Make no mistake, these are all unsubstantiated ideas and any person who makes any of these claims does so without any evidence and are rooted in a history of hate and ignorance. In this racist perspective, Jews are typically painted as controllers of capital and money, “clannish,” and as having an agenda beyond what is visible. These stereotypes constitute a large part of these conspiracy theories.

The first conspiracy we’ll review is the accusation that Jews have long been controlling the global financial system. This loony conspiracy theory goes back centuries, even before the founding of Christianity, and recently has been attached to the Rothschild family, who during the 1800’s amassed the largest private fortune in modern world history.

Usually, the main accusation made by theorists is that the Rothschilds are playing both sides of every conflict, ever. The Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, World War II, etc. Theorists claim that all sides of each war were merely puppets of the Rothschilds, who would make exorbitant amounts of cash from repeatedly prodding nations into a cycle of endless warfare. People actually still believe this today. Remember when former actor Mel Gibson once said during a 2006 DUI that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world“? This is the same conspiracy theory he was referencing.

Jews have also long been accused of controlling the Hollywood and the media. For examples see any comedian in the past 100 years make fun of this.

Another place we see an example of this conspiracy theory is in English literature which depicts Jewish characters as “a monied, cruel, lecherous, avaricious outsider tolerated only because of his golden hoard.” Think Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” or the hooked-nose Judas in “The Passion of the Christ.”

Modern anti-Semitic conspiracy theories depicting an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences, such as the idea that “the Jews” command the U.S. Federal Reserve System and in effect control the world’s money, largely take their cue from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a 1903 tract purporting to be the manual of a Jewish secret society planning world domination. It is still widely circulated and occasionally cited as “evidence” by various clueless anti-Semites despite being exposed as a fraud as early as 1921.

The Conspiracy Pushers

Donald Trump has surrounded himself with people who are true believers in these archaic and long debunked views, and at times quoted them directly in speeches and interviews.

The most famous example would be nutcase right-wing conspiracy theory pusher Alex Jones, an ally of Trump who he once called “amazing” and someone who Trump regularly quotes, who runs the crackpot Infowars.com site and disputes the idea the The Protocols is a fraud while pushing a New World Order fiction that makes Glenn Beck appear comparatively sane.

According to Jones just about every current event can be tied into the New World Order’s nefarious schemes. In short, he’s making money off of really gullible people who will believe anything, no matter the complete lack of evidence.

Jones frequently invokes “globalists” as the villains behind the various conspiracy theories he discusses on his radio show and included in almost every article and documentary on his Infowars.com website has a reference to the Rothschild conspiracy theory, that there is secretive Jewish family controlling all word events for their personal monetary gain. Some examples of these articles include:

There is also the alt-right white supremacist site Breitbart.com, whose Editor in Chief Steve Bannon is currently working as the CEO of the Trump campaign. BuzzFeed reported that Trump’s speech was co-written by Stephen Bannon. Breitbart.com has long had an anti-Semetic history since Bannon took charge, writing articles like:

Reality

These racist sources that push crazy conspiracies are where Trump is getting his information from, he is personally intertwined with its players, he repeatedly quotes it, and it is wildly insane and completely soaked in racism.

You and I may have not picked up on this racist “dog whistle” at first, but now we know more about the story behind when Donald Trump makes a statement like, “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers,” does his anti-Jewish message seem more clear?

Media

Remarks at 5:15 mark.

Trump: ‘We Should Take a Drug Test Prior to the Debate’

Donald Trump on Saturday suggested both presidential candidates should take a drug test before the next debate, saying that Hillary Clinton is “actually getting pumped up.”

“At the beginning of her last debate, she was all pumped at the beginning, but at the end she was all ‘take me down.’ She could barely reach her car,” Trump said at a rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “I think we should take a drug test. Anyway, I’m willing to do it.”

The GOP nominee compared the candidates to athletes, saying he “took down 17 senators and governors.”

“We’re like athletes, but athletes, they make them take a drug test. We should take a drug test,” he said. “I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate because I don’t know what’s going on with her.”

The final presidential debate will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday.

Trump has previously attacked the Democratic nominee’s health and stamina. This past week, Trump’s campaign released an ad arguing Clinton does not have “fortitude, strength or stamina” to lead the country.

Six days ago, Trump ally Roger Stone suggested in an interview with radio host Alex Jones that Clinton was “jacked up on something, I assume some kind of methamphetamine.”

“I don’t think she has the stamina for a campaign,” Stone said. “They managed to prop her up for one debate, she can’t even keep her full schedule because her health is so bad.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

She’s low energy, she’s high energy, what is it?

Media

Faked Conspiracy Travels From Russian Propaganda to Donald Trump’s Mouth

At an October 10 campaign rally, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed Clinton family friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal told Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that “one important point has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable.” Trump alleged Blumenthal said that “if the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate”:

However, Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald found the alleged Blumenthal comments “really, really familiar.” Eichenwald found the comments “so familiar” because, in fact, “they were something I wrote.”

In an October 10 article, Eichenwald revealed that Sputnik, a news organization “established by the [Russian] government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya,” discovered in a WikiLeaks dump of Podesta’s hacked emails “a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal” calling the Benghazi attacks a “legitimate” talking point against Clinton.

In reality, Sputnik’s declared “‘October surprise’” quoted “two sentences from a 10,000 word piece” Eichenwald wrote for Newsweek “which apparently Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta.” Contrary to the lies from Sputnik and Trump, Eichenwald’s article is not about how the Benghazi attacks are Hillary Clinton’s fault, but rather “the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans” and “the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation.”

Even though “once they realized their error, Sputnik took the article down,” Trump continued to use Russian state media’s lie as a weapon against his political opponent. This fits Trump and his campaign’s pattern of questionable relations with Russia, including calls for the Kremlin to commit a cyberattack against Hillary Clinton.

Reality

So how did Donald Trump end up advancing the same falsehood put out by Putin’s mouthpiece?

On the internet a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on, and this incorrect story was clearly shared enough in the areas of the internet where conspiracy theories and pro-Russian views thrive. Trump must have seen this story on Sputnik or shared on a site that uses Russian propaganda as a source.

If the dark areas of the internet where conspiracy theories are incubated is where Trump and his campaign go looking for information then this should be a major concern.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y86z3k5s8XY

Trump Says Illegal Immigrants Pouring Across the Border to Vote

The federal government is allowing illegal immigrants to flow into the U.S. so they can vote, Donald Trump alleged Friday, fueling his own argument that November’s presidential election will be rigged against him.

At a roundtable with National Border Patrol Council members Friday morning inside Trump Tower, Art Del Cueto, national vice president of the union that represents Border Patrol agents, told the Republican presidential nominee that agents have been advised not to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records, according to a pool report.

Trump conveyed his appreciation for Border Patrol agents, telling them their jobs would be so much easier if they just allowed people to come across the border.

“But you love our country,” Trump said, adding, “You know many people are coming in with criminal records.”

Del Cueto told Trump that he has spoken to a number of agents who are in charge of processing. “And the problem that we’re seeing reflected through us as a voice is that some of these individuals that were apprehended with criminal records, they’re not, they’re checking their records, they see that they have criminal records, but they’re setting them aside because at this point they are saying immigration is so tied up with trying to get the people who are on the waiting list to hurry up and get them their immigration status corrected,” he said.

“Why? Trump asked. “So they can go ahead and vote before the election,” Del Cueto responded.

“Big statement, fellas,” Trump said, motioning to reporters, whom he accused of concealing from the public what they just heard. “You’re not going to write it. That’s huge. But they’re letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote.”

Del Cueto said the government wants “to hurry up and fast track them so they can go ahead and vote in the election,” prompting Trump to promote himself as a change agent.

“You hear a thing like that, and it’s a disgrace,” he said. “Well, it will be a lot different if I get elected.”

The real estate mogul suggested at last week’s presidential debate that he would accept the outcome of the election — but his rhetoric before and after his first faceoff with Hillary Clinton has contradicted that claim.

“The answer is, if she wins, I will absolutely support her,” Trump told debate moderator Lester Holt, indicating that he would concede the election if he lost to Clinton without floating conspiracies of a rigged election.

At a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Wednesday, Trump again hinted of a rigged election, urging his supporters to turn out even on their death beds so “the other side” doesn’t steal the election.

“I say kiddingly, but I mean it: I don’t care how sick you are. I don’t care if you just came back from the doctor and he gave you the worst possible prognosis, meaning it’s over, you won’t be around in two weeks,” Trump said. “Doesn’t matter. Hang out ‘til Nov. 8. Get out and vote. And then all we’re gonna say is we love you and we will remember you always. Get out and vote. And don’t let the other side take this election away from us because this is the last chance we get.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday condemned Trump for sowing doubt in voters’ minds by questioning the integrity of the presidential election.

“I don’t think it’s good for democracy to have a major candidate for president doubt the outcome. Now, could the election be compromised from hacking and all kind of nefarious activities?” he told CNN. “Yeah, that’s possible, but being rigged means it’s rigged against you. And I think Mr. Trump’s fate is in his own hands. The system’s not rigged against him, as far as I can tell, and when you suggest it might be, then that’s a message to your supporters and to the country as a whole that you can’t trust the outcome of an American election.”

He added, “We got enough problems here at home without making people believe that we’re not gonna honestly elect the next president.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Since 1996, federal law has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections, punishing them by fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility, and deportation.

There’s no evidence, though, that immigrants (a) come to the country illegally to vote, (b) register to vote illegally and (c) cast votes in federal elections on any substantive scale.

Media

The Washington Post

Trump Mocks Clinton Stumble

Donald Trump mocked Hillary Clinton for stumbling during a 9/11 memorial event last month, imitating her fall that doctors chalked up to dehydration.

It’s a personal attack Republicans have warned Trump, the party’s presidential nominee, to avoid. But while he has refused to engage on the issue, even publicly wishing her well, his tone changed Saturday night after an especially heated week.

“Here’s a woman — she’s supposed to fight all these different things — and she can’t make it 15 feet to her car, give me a break,” he said during a rally in Manheim, Pa.

Trump then began to mimic Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, toppling over, stepping away from his microphone and pretending to stumble.

“She’s home resting right now, getting ready for her next speech, which is going to be 15 minutes in about two to three days. Folks, we need stamina, we need energy, we need people that are going to turn deals around,” Trump said.

Cellphone video of Clinton stumbling as aides led her to a car at a 9/11 memorial in New York City last month prompted the campaign to admit that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia, which ultimately led to dehydration.

It played into conservative theories that Clinton is not as healthy as she claims. Trump allies have long questioned Clinton’s health.

But Clinton’s staffers pushed back at those rumors by releasing more of Clinton’s health records, including a note from her doctor outlining her care.

The diagnosis led her to take a few days off from the campaign trail before returning.
Trump has regularly questioned Clinton’s stamina on the stump, and while he remained cordial in the aftermath of the September episode, wishing her well in a statement and in subsequent rallies, his allies continued to float those concerns, as well as conspiracy theories.

When Trump hit Clinton’s “stamina” once again during Monday’s presidential debate, Clinton struck back.

“As soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina,” Clinton responded.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

https://youtu.be/mP1ArOF7YKE

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