Category: Not Factual

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

Trump Cites Police, Military, ICE Endorsements That Didn’t Happen

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump frequently touts his support among law enforcement and military figures.

On Monday, he told News4Jax that the United States military “conceptually” endorsed him and that “virtually every police department” in the country backed his bid for the presidency. During last week’s third debate, Trump said his hardline stance on immigration and pledge to build a border wall had earned him an endorsement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But none of that is true.

Federal agencies are barred by law from endorsing candidates in political elections. Under the Hatch Act, only the president, vice president and high-ranking administration officials are allowed to dip their toe in partisan waters.

The Department of Defense, meanwhile, has its own set of guidelines that tightly restricts any active duty military or civilian personnel from publicly choosing political sides.

The same applies to Trump’s repeated claims about ICE, the agency tasked with deporting undocumented immigrants. Trump has doubled down during campaign rallies and onstage at debates by saying that ICE endorsed him.

But the agency has not endorsed any candidate, nor is it able to. Instead the union representing ICE employees, National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, gave the Republican nominee its backing. And it represents just a quarter of the more than 20,000 employees that work at the agency.

Trump did receive an endorsement from more than 88 retired military figures last month. His list of supporters included top military brass and Medal of Honor recipients, including Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow, a former Army green beret and Holocaust survivor, and Vietnam veteran Rear Admiral Charles Williams.

However, Trump’s support from military quarters pales in comparison to what some Republican predecessors received when they ran for the Oval Office.

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee who lost in 2012, received a sweeping endorsement from 500 retired generals and admirals. The veterans banded together to release a full-page ad in the Washington Times highlighting their support.

Trump has also overstated his standing with local police departments. He has picked up endorsements from the federal police union, the Fraternal Order of Police.

But the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in New York, the largest police union in the country with 23,000 members, has remained on the sidelines this election and has yet to back a candidate.

Police departments as a whole do not typically endorse candidates in elections. Though that has not stopped Trump from saying they do.

After a meeting with first responders and law enforcement officials in northern Florida on Monday, Trump later boasted on Twitter that he was honored for being endorsed by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.

But the department did no such thing. The sheriff’s office took to both Facebook and Twitter to make clear that despite Trump’s comment, they have “NOT made any official endorsement.”

(h/t NBC News)

Trump Walked Off of an Interview After a Question About Racism

Donald Trump on Thursday cut an interview short with an Ohio journalist after the correspondent asked him to address criticism that he’s racist and sexist.

The Republican nominee quietly thanked NBC 4’s Colleen Marshall and began to walk away while she was halfway through asking him how he feels about being “labeled a racist” and “called a sexist” so close to Election Day.

When she proceeded to probe him for his response, he said: “I am the least racist person you’ve ever met.”

Trump had been discussing an array of topics with Marshall, including his claims that the election is rigged and Republican leaders who have withdrawn their support from him, for about three minutes before she brought up the apparently sensitive issue.

(h/t Time)

Reality

If Trump can’t answer a simple question from a reporter without losing his temper, how can we expect him to react when dealing with adversarial foreign leaders?

Trump claimed he was the least racist person ever, and we might be inclined to believe him if it wasn’t for the racist things he has said over the course of his campaign.

So far we’ve cataloged over 115 instances of Trump making a racist comments or claims. Some of them include:

  • Donald Trump was the leader of the “birther” conspiracy theory movement, which was a racist attempt to delegitimize America’s first African-American president.
  • As House Speaker Paul Ryan explained, Donald Trump’s remarks saying a judge presiding over a lawsuit involving his scam of a university was biased solely because of his Mexican heritage is “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
  • Trump tweeted wildly racist and inaccurate stats about murders by race in the United States.
  • Trump retweeted the same white supremacist not once, but twice.
  • The Trump campaign had 3 known white supremacists as delegates to the Republican National Convention to represent Trump, William Johnson, Guy St. Onge, and Lori Gayne whose Twitter handle was “whitepride”.

Media

Trump Pushes Fear of Non-Existent Partial Birth Abortions

In the final presidential debate, Donald Trump said he supports the federal ban on “partial-birth” abortion because, under the procedure:

“You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day.”

He added that this can happen “as late as one or two or three or four days prior to birth.”

(h/t NPR)

Reality

However this does not happen.

Partial birth abortions is a non-medical term the pro-life lobby National Right to Life Committee made up in the ’90s for a procedure that was outlawed in 2003 by the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, signed by President George W. Bush.

The law banned the procedure, imposing a fine and imprisonment for any physician who “knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus.” The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in 2007.

Trump’s erroneous claim garnered widespread criticism, as medical professionals and others explained that there is no such thing as an “abortion” at nine months.

Some 91 percent of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Only 1.3 percent of abortions happen at or after 21 weeks after conception. Of those, the vast majority happen before 24 weeks. Under the current federal ban, a dilation and extraction (D&X), or intact dilation and evacuation (D&E) — what opponents call “partial-birth” abortion — is still allowed if the life of the mother is at stake, which his guaranteed under Row vs. Wade. Still, very few providers perform it and the exact number of procedures is not known, but it’s believed to be small.

That’s because, along with the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, 19 states have their own such bans, while 43 states impose some kind of restriction on abortions later in pregnancy.

Understand that abortion is a very serious and polarizing issue to many people, but if we are to have an equally serious discussion and debate then we should be arguing the facts and realities instead of fear-based allegations, otherwise we dishonor the lives and decisions of everyone involved.

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 Made No 9/11 Donations in Year After Attack, Despite His Promise

The New York City Comptroller’s Office has found no evidence that Donald Trump donated to 9/11 charities in the months after the attacks, the agency said.

Trump had promised weeks after the 2001 attack to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund as part of a charity effort by “The Howard Stern Show.”

“My office has reviewed the donations made in the nearly 12 months following the attacks – and we didn’t find evidence that he contributed a single cent to the victims, our first responders, and to our city through the Twin Towers Fund,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement to ABC News today.

“In the wake of 9/11, New Yorkers came together, healed, and rebuilt. If Donald Trump claimed to donate and didn’t, if he claimed to support New Yorkers in a time of crisis and refused, then that would be just plain wrong.”

It’s possible that the Republican presidential nominee donated after the two audit periods reviewed by Stringer’s office. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

At the request of multiple news organizations, including the New York Daily News, which first reported the story, Stringer’s office conducted a review of previously sealed records of the Twin Towers Fund and the New York City Public/Private Initiatives Inc., doing business as the Twin Towers Fund, which were set up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to raise money to support victims’ families, first responders and first responders’ families.

The New York City Comptroller’s Office confirmed to ABC News that it had manually reviewed about 1,500 pages of donor records, containing the names of more than 110,000 individuals and entities that were collected as part of the audits. The audit of the Twin Towers Fund covered the period from Sept. 12, 2001 to Aug. 31, 2002, while the audit of the New York City Public/Private Initiatives Inc., doing business as the Twin Towers Fund, covered the period Sept. 12, 2001 to June 30, 2002.

Stringer’s office found no record of a donation made by Trump or a Trump entity in the year after the tragedy, contrary to the real estate developer’s claims.

(h/t ABC News)

Trump Tries to Undercut New York Times Article by Lying

At a rally in West Palm Beach, Florida, Donald J. Trump went on a raving tear about the media, telling the crowd the press will say any lie in order to keep Hillary Clinton in power.

As his evidence he cited a The New York Times article published back in May with the headline “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private” where the authors conducted more than 50 interviews over the course of six weeks.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/us/politics/donald-trump-women.html)

In his speech, Trump claimed that one of the women featured in the article, Rowanne Brewer Lane, recanted her story which undercut the rest of the evidence.

However Brewer Lane, who was interviewed for this story by Fox and Friends, only disputed the Times’ framing of her account, never the facts of the events.

“Actually, it was very upsetting. I was not happy to read it at all,” Brewer Lane said. “Well, because The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across. They promised several times that they would do it accurately. They told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it and honestly, and it absolutely was not.”

But when asked what the reporters got wrong, Brewer Lane said they took her quotes and “put a negative connotation on it.”

Even though Brewer Lane never disputed the facts of the article, The New York Times story is just not Rowanne Brewer Lane’s account of Trump in the 1990’s but the experience of 50 women who were interviewed for the article. If we can discount Brewer Lane’s story then that still leaves 49 women, 11 who were named, who had the same experience of misogyny from Donald Trump.

Donald Trump lied.

Reality

Unless Donald Trump can prove that the remaining 49 subjects were also misrepresented, it is incorrect of him to declare the story was “proven false.”

And this does not cover the sexist comments made by Trump since announcing his campaign. Just a few examples include:

Giuliani Lies Clinton Didn’t Visit Ground Zero After 9/11

Former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani accused Hillary Clinton of failing to honor the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that took down the World Trade Center, incorrectly suggesting at one point that she lied about visiting Ground Zero in the aftermath.

“Don’t tell me, if you said that, that you remember September 11, 2001. I remember September 11, 2001,” Giuliani said during a Donald Trump campaign rally here in Florida. “Yes, you helped to get benefits for the people who were injured one day. But I heard her say she was there that day. I was there that day, I don’t remember seeing Hillary Clinton there.”

While Clinton was not in New York on Sept. 11, she flew there on Sept. 12, in one of the few airplanes allowed to travel after the attacks. Pictures of Giuliani and Clinton inspecting the destruction together are widely available.

Clinton, who was a U.S. senator from New York at the time of 9/11, was in the District that day. The Pentagon was also attacked, and security officials feared the Capitol could also be targeted. Clinton flew to New York with fellow Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) soon after the attacks.

She describes that scene in detail in her book, “Hard Choices,” and refers to the “long sleepless night in Washington” before flying to New York on Sept. 12. She does not appear to have said publicly at any point that she was in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.

She most recently described her experience in the aftermath of 9/11 during an interview with CNN last month in which she detailed finding out about the attack that day as she was en route to the Capitol.

“There weren’t that many survivors; the ones that did survive were grievously injured. The loss of life was overwhelming,” Clinton told CNN during the interview. “But it was also my job and the job of other officials to get our city and state and country what we needed.”

Earlier this year, Trump praised Clinton’s efforts after the attacks, saying in July she was “enormously supportive and enormously helpful.”

Giuliani has become a regular presence on the campaign trail and is an active TV surrogate for Trump. He said Wednesday that Americans “need a strong man, need an independent man, need a man who tells it straight.

“Sometimes really straight,” he added, laughing. “But boy, a heckofa lot better than being a liar.”

(h/t The Washington Post)

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

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