Category: Ill-Tempered

On Twitter, Trump Defends Foundation, Ignores Legal Controversy Surrounding It

President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday night to defend the charitable foundation he has pledged to close, saying the media had not given him enough credit for his generosity and ignoring the legal issues that ensnared the organization in controversy.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation has come under intense scrutiny this year after reports in The Washington Post detailing its practices, including cases in which Trump apparently used the charity’s money to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit businesses.

New York’s attorney general is investigating the charity, and a spokeswoman for that office said on Saturday that the foundation could not officially shut down until that probe is over. Among the issues at hand is whether Trump violated a “self-dealing” provision that says nonprofit leaders cannot use their charity’s funds to help themselves, their relatives or their businesses.

“I gave millions of dollars to DJT Foundation, raised or recieved millions more, ALL of which is given to charity, and media won’t report!” Trump said in one Monday night tweet.

“The DJT Foundation, unlike most foundations, never paid fees, rent, salaries or any expenses. 100% of money goes to wonderful charities!” the president-elect said in another.

Trump and his companies gave about $6 million to his foundation since its launch in 1987, according to tax filings. The most recent tax filings go up to the end of 2015.

Other people have collectively given about $9.5 million. The biggest outside donors were Vince and Linda McMahon, two pro-wrestling moguls, who gave the Trump Foundation $5 million between 2007 and 2009. Trump recently nominated Linda McMahon to head the Small Business Administration.

Trump himself gave nothing to his foundation between 2009 and 2014, according to filings. His businesses contributed in 2015 for the first time in several years.

Experts on charities say it’s rare for the founder of a private, name-branded foundation to give nothing to his own foundation while relying entirely on donations from others. That anomaly allowed Trump to take advantage of the idea that the money in the foundation was his.

Trump’s donations to his foundation are also small, by the standards of billionaires’ philanthropy.

Filmmaker George Lucas, for instance, who is tied with Trump at 324th place in Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires, donated $925 million to his family foundation in 2012. In 2014, Lucas’s foundation gave out $55 million in donations to museums, hospitals, artistic groups and environmental charities.

While much of the Trump foundation’s money has gone to charity, there are some high-profile exceptions.

In 2013, the Trump foundation gave a $25,000 gift to a campaign committee backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) even though nonprofits like the charity are not allowed to give political gifts.

That gift was made as Bondi’s office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. A consultant who worked on Bondi’s reelection effort has said that Bondi was not aware of the allegations when she solicited the donation from Trump. Ultimately, Bondi’s office did not pursue the fraud allegations.

Trump also reported using foundation money to buy items for himself, which runs afoul of federal tax law.

The Trump Foundation spent $30,000 to buy two large portraits of Trump himself, including one that was hung up in the sports bar at a Trump-owned resort. Trump also appears to have used $258,000 of his foundation’s money — legally earmarked for charitable purposes — to settle lawsuits involving two of his for-profit clubs.

The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) announced its investigation of the Trump Foundation after reports in The Post described such apparent cases of self-dealing that date back to 2007.

Trump’s foundation has admitted in IRS tax filings for 2015 that it violated a prohibition against “self-dealing” that says nonprofit leaders cannot use their charity’s funds to help themselves, their relatives or their businesses.

In these tax filings, the charity checked “yes” in response to a question asking whether it had transferred any income or assets to “a disqualified person” — a description that could have meant Trump, a relative or a Trump-owned business.

Trump has not said what exactly he did to violate the rule, or what he has paid the IRS in penalty taxes as a result. The IRS has not commented when asked whether it was investigating the Trump Foundation.

The New York attorney general’s investigation is unlikely to lead to any kind of criminal charge. Instead, Trump may be required to repay his foundation the money it spent to help him, and he may have to personally pay penalty taxes worth 10 percent or more of the value of the self-dealing transactions.

Trump’s tweet was correct in that his foundation has low overhead. It has no paid staff, and only a five-member board. It also has spent almost nothing on legal fees, raising the question of whether the organization was aware of the legal problems it created.

Newly Certified Trump Feuds with Bill Clinton

Now that the Electoral College has officially made him president-elect, Donald Trump spent Tuesday holding meetings and feuding with former president Bill Clinton.

Responding to criticism from the ex-president, Trump said he and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost this year’s election because they failed to pay attention to essential states.

“They focused on wrong states,” Trump said in a brief tweet burst.

In an interview with a weekly newspaper in New York state, Clinton said that Trump “doesn’t know much,” but “one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.” Clinton also said that Trump called him after the election, another source of dispute between the two men.

Tweeted Trump: “Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong, he called me (with a very nice congratulations).”

The president-elect said Clinton is the one who “doesn’t know much,” including “how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states ( and more).”

While losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2.8 million, Trump triumphed in the Electoral College by winning more states. They included industrial states that had gone Democratic in recent presidential elections: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Electors in those and other states ratified Trump’s victory in Monday meetings of the Electoral College.

Despite the efforts of anti-Trump organizations, only two electors defected from the Republican candidate; five Democratic electors refused to vote for Clinton.

“With this historic step we can look forward to the bright future ahead,” the president-elect said after the Electoral College vote. “I will work hard to unite our country and be the President of all Americans. Together, we will make America great again.”

The president-elect is spending Christmas week at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he is holding job interviews and planning meetings.

Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45th president a month from Tuesday.

Trump also issued statements condemning deadly attacks in Germany and Turkey.

After a truck attack on a holiday market in Berlin, Trump said “innocent civilians were murdered in the streets as they prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday … These terrorists and their regional and worldwide networks must be eradicated from the face of the earth, a mission we will carry out with all freedom-loving partners.”

Trump also spoke out after Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was “assassinated by a radical Islamic terrorist.”

He added: “The murder of an ambassador is a violation of all rules of civilized order and must be universally condemned.”

(h/t USA Today)

Donald Trump Angrily Tweeted About the SNL Sketch About Him Tweeting

President-elect Donald Trump unleashed another tweet of rage targeting “Saturday Night Live” — slamming the show as “unwatchable” and “totally biased.”

“Just tried watching Satruday Night Live – unwatchable!” he tweeted just after midnight on Sunday. “Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse.”

“Sad,” he added.

He posted it after a sketch on Saturday night made fun of Trump’s persistent use of Twitter. The clip featured Alec Baldwin, playing Mr. Trump, obsessively retweeting other users.

“There is a reason actually that Donald tweets so much,” said Kate McKinnon, playing Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in the sketch. “He does it to distract the media from his business conflicts and all the very scary people in his Cabinet.”

Baldwin and McKinnon have both been celebrated for their impressions on the comedy show, which has a history of poking fun at everyone, including politicians, through impersonations.

(h/t CBS News)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI3g_laToxE

Kellyanne Conway: ‘Why Do You Care’ About Trump’s Tweets?

Former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Monday defended President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter vendetta against the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” arguing that social media use is “a great way” to “cut through the noise or silence” and that Trump has the right to offer his criticism.

“Why do you care?” Conway said when asked by “New Day” host Chris Cuomo about Trump’s “Hamilton” feud. “Who is to say that he can’t do that, make a comment, spend five minutes on a tweet and making a comment and still be president-elect?”

Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, criticized media coverage of the social media controversy, saying that Trump is “just trying to cut through the nonsense of people telling Americans what is important to them, which we saw through the elections wasn’t true. People constantly being told this issue, this statement, this past transgression is important to you — and Americans said, ‘No, it’s not. What’s important to me is this 100-day plan.'”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

But that is not what Donald Trump is doing.

Taking a look at his past 10 tweets, half of them are personal attacks against those who have criticized him. And we should care because Trump has made a habit of intimidating those who disagree with him, both in the press and private citizens.

trump-tweet-timeline-2016-11

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIT9lD1z0TQ

After Demanding Safe Spaces in Theaters Trump Attacks Saturday Night Live

President-elect Donald Trump has taken to Twitter again this weekend to dress down another actor: Alec Baldwin.

“I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show – nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?” tweeted Trump on Sunday morning.

Baldwin did his famous Trump impersonation on the long-running NBC show on Saturday in a sketch that focused on how Trump is in way over his head as the future leader of the free world.

To Trump’s criticism, Baldwin shot off a string of tweets on Sunday, giving Trump some unsolicited advice on how to proceed as the next commander-in-chief, saying, in part, “You know what I would do if I were Prez? I’d be focused on how to improve the lives of AS MANY AMERICANS AS POSSIBLE.”

And, “Equal time? Election is over. There is no more equal time. Now u try 2 b Pres + ppl respond. That’s pretty much it.”

(h/t AOL News)

Reality

Donald Trump, who claims he alone can defeat ISIS, is losing a twitter war with Broadway and Alec Baldwin

Trump Demands Artists Asking Pence for Equal Treatment to Apologize

President-elect Donald Trump accused the “Hamilton” cast Saturday of harassing Vice president-elect Mike Pence at a performance Friday evening after the actors called on Pence to “uphold our American values.”

“Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

He followed up: “The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”

Cast member Brandon Dixon, who portrays Aaron Burr and delivered the statement to Pence during a curtain call, soon replied on Twitter, “@realDonaldTrump conversation is not harassment sir. And I appreciate @mike_pence for stopping to listen.”

Pence became part of the show Friday when he attended a performance of “Hamilton” in New York and was directly addressed by the cast.

Word spread on social media that Pence was in the house for the hit Broadway show, and during the curtain call, Dixon urged Pence to “work on behalf of all of us.”

“Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at ‘Hamilton: An American Musical.’ We really do,” Dixon said. “We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”

Dixon, who urged the audience not to boo Pence, said the show was performed by “a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations.”

The crowd loudly cheered and applauded Dixon’s remarks.

Sam Rudy, a publicist for “Hamilton,” said Pence was exiting the theater at the time and stopped to listen to Dixon. Rudy described Dixon’s remarks as a “polite request” and said he can “see no way whatsoever how the cast of ‘Hamilton’ can be seen as being rude.”

“I don’t know what (Trump) qualifies as harassment,” Rudy added.

Messages left with Pence representatives were not returned.

Pence, who has been in New York to assist with Trump’s transition, was greeted inside the theater earlier in the night by a chorus of boos, though some applauded.

Despite Trump’s harsh rebuke of the confrontation, Dixon’s rhetoric was not dissimilar to remarks Trump himself has made in the past about uniting the country.

“I’m asking America to join me in dreaming big and bold, and dream for wonderful things in our future. Let’s close the history books on the failures in Washington and let’s open a new chapter of success and prosperity for all of our people. We have a divided nation, a seriously divided nation. All of our people — that is how we will truly make American great again,” Trump said in Washington last month.

“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is no stranger to politics, having backed Hillary Clinton during this year’s election cycle. In addition to endorsing Clinton, Miranda held a benefit showing of the musical in July, where admission to the show supported the Clinton campaign — some tickets reportedly went for as much as $10,000.

(h/t CNN)

 

Trump Rails Against New York Times for Reporting On His Transition ‘Disarray’

Twitter

Roughly 10 hours after tweeting that the process of picking his cabinet was “very organized,” President-elect Donald Trump railed against a New York Times report that his transition team was “in a state of disarray” and U.S. allies were “struggling” to reach him.

“The failing @nytimes story is so totally wrong on transition,” Trump tweeted early Wednesday morning. “It is going so smoothly. Also, I have spoken to many foreign leaders.”

According to the Times report, Trump’s transition has been “marked by firings, infighting and revelations that American allies were blindly dialing in to Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be-leader of the free world.”

But on Twitter, the president-elect asserted he’s taken “calls from many foreign leaders,” including Russia, the U.K., China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

“I am always available to them,” Trump tweeted, suggesting that the Times is “just upset that they looked like fools” in their coverage of his candidacy and are now taking it out on him.

On Sunday, Trump similarly criticized the paper’s “very poor and highly inaccurate coverage” of his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in last Tuesday’s presidential election, claiming the paper “is losing thousands of subscribers” as a result.

A spokeswoman for the Times said Trump’s tweet was simply inaccurate.

“We’ve seen a surge in new subscriptions, both print and digital,” Eileen Murphy, senior vice president of communications for the Times, wrote in an email to Yahoo News. “And the rate of growth post-Election Day has been four times better than normal.”

He then claimed that the Times “sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me.” But the letter — sent by Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Dean Baquet to subscribers thanking them for their loyalty — did not include an apology.

Trump also took issue with the Times’ assertion that he “has suggested that more countries should acquire nuclear weapons.”

In an interview with the Times in March, however, Trump suggested exactly that.

In his interview “60 Minutes” which aired on CBS Sunday night, Trump said he’s going to be “very restrained” in his use of Twitter as commander in chief. But he said he would reserve the right to use it as a “method” to combat what he perceives as negative stories about him.

“I’m going to be very restrained, if I use it at all,” Trump said. “I’m not saying I love it, but it does get the word out.”

Before his latest rant against the Times on Wednesday, Trump pushed back against reports that he had requested security clearances for three of his children.

“I am not trying to get ‘top level security clearance’ for my children,” he tweeted. “This was a typically false news story.”

But according to NBC News, Team Trump has asked that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, have top-secret clearance for the daily presidential briefing.

(h/t Yahoo News)

Trump Calls Black Supporter ‘Thug,’ Throws Him Out Of Rally

Donald Trump ejected a black man waving a note at him at a North Carolina rally, after accusing him of being a “thug” hired by Democrats to disrupt the event.

But C.J. Cary, the man who was thrown out, claims he is a Trump supporter and was merely trying to deliver a message to the candidate to mend ties with some key demographic groups the GOP presidential nominee has offended.

At the Wednesday campaign rally in the town of Kinston, Cary stood a few dozen feet from the stage trying to get Trump’s attention by waving a note and yelling “Donald,” the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

Trump assumed Cary was a disruptive protester.

“Were you paid $1,500 to be a thug?” Trump asked Cary, according to the Observer. The real estate mogul then asked security to remove him.

Waving a note at a rally is certainly an unusual way to get a presidential candidate’s attention. The News & Observer’s Bryan Anderson, who was at the rally on Wednesday and reported on Friday that Cary is a Trump supporter, told The Huffington Post he initially thought the man was a protester as well.

In a tweet from the rally, Anderson simply referred to him as a “protester.”

Shortly after the rally, however, Cary contacted Anderson to tell him his story.

Cary, an ex-Marine and resident of Nash County, not far from where Kinston is located, told the reporter that he plans to vote for Trump. He merely wanted to offer his advice that the candidate should treat certain groups of Americans with more respect. He singled out African-Americans, women, college students and people with disabilities as constituencies that deserved better treatment from the GOP nominee.

“He entirely mistook that and thought that I was a protester,” Cary said.

Trump accused Clinton of paying Democratic activists to disrupt his rallies in the third and final presidential debate on Oct. 19.

In August, Trump’s security ejected Jake Anantha, a young Indian-American supporter from a Charlotte, North Carolina, rally after assuming the local college student was there to disrupt the event. Anantha subsequently said he would no longer be voting for Trump.

During the Republican primary, when protests at Trump rallies were more common, Trump drew criticism for encouraging his supporters to hurt protesters ― something they proved all too happy to oblige. The demonstrators on the receiving end of the worst violence appear to be disproportionately people of color.

There is something especially ironic, however, in Trump immediately dismissing as a “thug” a black supporter, who was specifically trying to get Trump to be more sensitive to African-Americans. “Thug” is a particularly racially fraught term that many observers, including Seattle Seahawks star Richard Sherman, argue has become a socially acceptable way to call black men the N-word.

Trump has historically low support among African-American voters, after months of inciting ― and benefitting from ― bigotry and racism.

Although Latino immigrants and Muslims have been the biggest targets of his campaign-trail invective, Trump has a long history of anti-black racism, from his public campaign to execute the Central Park 5 in 1989 to his leading role in the birther movement questioning President Barack Obama’s eligibility for the presidency. (The Central Park 5, young men of color accused of brutally raping a woman in Central Park, have since been exonerated by DNA evidence and received multi-million-dollar settlements from the city, but Trump continues to insist on their guilt.)

Even Trump’s attempts to show he is not racist have been racially insensitive. Trump routinely stereotypes African-Americans and Latinos as impoverished “inner-city” residents, a characterization members of those communities have complained is patronizing.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EOzrPRNdB4

Trump Says He’ll Teach Military Expert ‘a Couple of Things’ About Mosul

Donald Trump went on the offensive against a military expert and former dean of the Army War College, Jeff McCausland, who said the Republican nominee’s comments this weekend about the battle to reclaim Mosul in Iraq show he doesn’t have a firm grasp of military strategy.

“You can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the ongoing offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul is turning out to be a “total disaster.”

“We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. VOTE TRUMP and WIN AGAIN!” he tweeted.

Trump doubled down on his assertion that the element of surprise is an important military strategy.

“I’ve been hearing about Mosul now for three months. ‘We’re going to attack. We’re going to attack.’ Meaning Iraq’s going to attack but with us. OK? We’re going to attack. Why do they have to talk about it?” he asked Stephanopoulos.

“Element of surprise. One of the reasons they wanted Mosul, they wanted to get ISIS leaders who they thought were, you know, in Mosul. Those people have all left. As soon as they heard they’re going to be attacked, they left,” Trump added. “The resistance is much greater now because they knew about the attack. Why can’t they win first and talk later?”

But according to The New York Times, some military experts disagree with Trump’s claims that the element of surprise is crucial to win the fight against ISIS.

“What this shows is Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy,” McCausland told the Times.

McCausland replied to Trump’s comments to Stephanopoulos in a lengthy statement today, saying, “I can’t wait to sit down with Mr. Trump and hear what he has to teach me about military strategy. I’m happy to compare my record of over 45 years working in national security affairs with his any time.

“When it comes to the question of the Mosul offensive, Mr. Trump doesn’t understand that 99.9 percent of the troops involved are Iraqi,” McCausland continued. “I reassert my statement to The New York Times: Mr. Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy.”

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also hit Trump for his comments to Stephanopoulos yesterday at a joint campaign event with First Lady Michelle Obama in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, today.

“And yesterday when he heard a retired army colonel and former dean of the Army War College said that Donald doesn’t understand military strategy, Trump said ‘I’ll teach him a couple of things,'” she continued. “Well, actually, Donald, you’re the one who’s got a lot to learn about the military and everything else that makes America great.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is on the ground in Iraq and told ABC’s Martha Raddatz in an interview earlier this week that he’s “encouraged” by the progress in the fight against ISIS because it “is going according to plan … ISIL will surely be destroyed.”

Trump blamed Clinton and President Barack Obama for the need to reclaim Mosul.

“We had Mosul. We have to take it because Hillary Clinton and Obama left that big vacuum, and ISIS went in, and they took Mosul,” he said.

(h/t ABC News)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZXuAl6c6k8

Trump to Dana Bash: That’s ‘a Very Rude Question’

With less than two weeks until the 2016 presidential election, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Donald Trump about where, and how, he’s spending his final days as a candidate.

The Republican nominee did not much care for the reporter’s inquiry.

“I think it’s a very rude question, to be honest with you,” said Trump, taking offense to Bash asking why the candidate was at a hotel ribbon-cutting in Washington, rather than campaigning in key battleground locales like Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida.

“For people who say you’re taking time out of swing states to go do this,” began Bash, referencing Trump’s appearance at the soft opening of his latest real estate jewel, Washington’s Trump International.

Cutting her off, Trump criticized not only the question, but also his opponent, the Democratic nominee: “For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting, because Hillary Clinton does one stop and then goes home and sleeps. Yet you’ll ask me that question.”

Trump has campaign stops scheduled in North Carolina for later on Wednesday, before the nation selects it’s next president on Tuesday November 8, 2016.

(h/t CNN)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H613iUjfzc8

1 … 94 95 96 97 98 … 100