A top Donald Trump supporter on Tuesday tweeted a photo of Hillary Clinton, which featured a written message accusing the former secretary of state of murder.
Michael Cohen, who serves as special counsel at the Trump Organization, tweeted:
The graphic he included in the tweet features a picture of Clinton, with the words, “I presided over $6 billion lost at the State Department, sold uranium to the Russians through my faux charity, illegally deleted public records, and murdered an ambassador. Elect me!”
Messages left with Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaigns were not immediately returned.
CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield slammed Cohen on her show Tuesday, saying: “This show is called ‘Legal View’ because we know a thing or two about the law, and Michael Cohen is a lawyer. That there is libel.”
“To suggest that a woman murdered an ambassador. Look, it’s not as though Hillary Clinton’s team is about to go and launch some litigation on this, but that’s pretty striking stuff,” she said.
Banfield showed a tweet from 2014 of Cohen with Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, where he wrote, “#tbt being received by two great Americans…Hillary Clinton and Patrick Kennedy at the Kennedy Compound.”
#tbt being received by two great Americans…Hillary Clinton and Patrick Kennedy at the Kennedy Compound pic.twitter.com/z57PXfWxfW
“Apparently Michael Cohen thought she was a great American two years after Benghazi, and now he does not,” she said. “Let’s just be really frank here, people. Don’t call someone a murderer of an ambassador, for God’s sake. It’s offensive to Americans who really want the truth and what’s going on in politics. Please, give us a break.”
Cohen’s tweet comes the same day as a the House Select Committee on Benghazi released an extensive report on the September 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The report from the House Republicans on the committee argues that intelligence was available suggesting an attack in the area was possible and that Clinton and a top aide, Patrick Kennedy, should have realized the risks.
Cohen’s tweet came after an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published Tuesday shows Trump is ahead of Clinton at “being honest and straightforward” 41% to 25% respectively and 44% to 39% on the issue of national security.
Clinton did not kill Ambassador Stevens and 2 years of 8 Republican-led Benghazi committees found no wrongdoing by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or President Obama.
Let’s also review the other claims.
$6 Billion Lost
False – The State Department inspector general discovered $6 billion worth of federal contracts that overlapped with Clinton’s tenure that had either missing or incomplete paperwork. “The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” the IG’s office wrote in the audit, which did not mention Clinton by name and covers a six-year period that continued well after she left office in early 2013.
False – This comes from the book “Clinton Cash” where the author falsely claimed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had “veto power” and “could have stopped” Russia from buying a company with extensive uranium mining operations in the U.S. In fact, only the president has such power.
Donald Trump praised the Scottish this morning for “[taking] their country back” in the UK’s vote to leave the European Union. This is despite the fact that Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, with 62 percent of the population backing the Remain campaign. However, this wasn’t enough to change the total outcome of the UK vote, which backed the decision to leave 52 percent to 48 percent.
Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!
Donald Trump insisted Thursday that the private email server Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state was hacked, but the presumptive Republican nominee couldn’t say where he learned that information.
“But is there any evidence that it was hacked other than — routine phishing –” “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt asked Trump in a sit-down interview that will air Thursday on “NBC Nightly News.”
“I think I read that,” Trump said. “And I heard it, and somebody–”
“Where?” Holt pressed him.
“—that also gave me that information. I will report back to you. I’ll give it to you,” Trump said.
U.S. officials have told NBC News that there is no evidence that hackers penetrated the server, although there is evidence of phishing attempts. Clinton’s campaign says that there is no evidence that her private server was ever hacked.
Trump’s remark comes a day after he argued that Clinton’s private server left her vulnerable to blackmail if she were president.
“Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments — perhaps even by her financial backers in Communist China — putting all of America in danger,” Trump said Wednesday in a speech that slammed Clinton. “Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted. While we may not know what is in those deleted emails, our enemies probably do. So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be president of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency.”
NBC News fact-checked some of Trump’s claims in the speech.
Trump’s campaign offered alleged examples of attempted hacks from China and other countries in a published version of his Wednesday address, but none of the cited reports say that Clinton’s server was ever successfully penetrated as the candidate argued.
Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday hit Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on the topic of faith, telling a group of evangelical leaders who represent a crucial Republican constituency that “there’s nothing out there” regarding the former secretary of state’s religion.
Clinton is, in fact, a practicing Methodist who knows her Bible well and speaks often about the important role faith plays in her life. In her books, and occasionally on the campaign trail, Clinton has talked openly of how she turned to faith in times of hardship, including during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the death of her best friend, Diane Blair, in 2000.
Trump, on the other hand, identifies as a Presbyterian but has struggled to demonstrate basic Biblical literacy this election cycle. Last year, Trump’s Manhattan church, Marble Collegiate, released a statement saying the twice-divorced real estate developer was not an “active member.” Earlier this year Trump mispronounced a book of the Bible and cursed — twice — during an address at Liberty University, the world’s largest Christian college.
Still, attacking other people’s faith appears to be a favorite move in Trump’s playbook.
The pattern looks to have begun with President Obama. In questioning Clinton’s religious convictions Tuesday, Trump added an attack of the president, saying “it’s going to be an extension of Obama, but it’s going to be worse.” But even before Trump launched his White House bid a year ago, he was known to regularly cast doubt on Obama’s Christianity.
“He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim,” Trump told Fox News in 2011. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that.”
Five years later, the questions haven’t stopped. As recently as February, Trump tweeted that Obama might have attended Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral “if it were held in a Mosque.” When pressed for clarification, however, Trump insisted he wasn’t implying anything.
I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque? Very sad that he did not go!
Since running for president, Trump has also raised similar faith-based concerns about his fellow Republicans.
In October, retired neurosurgeon and devout Seventh-day Adventist Ben Carson was the target: “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness,” Trump told voters in Florida. “I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about.”
In January, lifelong Southern Baptist and son of a pastor Ted Cruz was in the crosshairs: “Just remember this,” Trump said, “in all fairness, to the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, okay?”
Even people who aren’t running for president appear to be fair game for Trump’s tests of piety. Speaking at a rally in March, Trump delivered a signature takedown of one of his most vocal critics, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, calling him a “choke artist” for failing to defeat Obama in 2012. Trump then turned to Romney’s faith.
“Are you sure he’s a Mormon?” Trump asked the crowd in Salt Lake City, home to both Romney and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ headquarters. “Are we sure?”
Donald Trump says there is nothing out there about Hillary Clinton’s religion. Except if you Google “hillary clinton religion” you will indeed get things out there about Hillary Clinton’s religion.
Donald Trump said he was right to imply that President Obama is an ISIS sympathizer.
In an attempt to defend his controversial claims that the president supports the terrorist group, the presumptive Republican nominee tweeted a story from anti-Obama website Breitbart.com that cites a newly discovered “secret” memo the website says proves Obama is an ISIS supporter.
The memo, as it turns out, is neither secret nor does it demonstrate the administration’s support for ISIS or any other policy. Indeed, it’s a recently declassified and heavily redacted intelligence field report from August 2012 about the worsening security situation in Iraq, obtained by the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
Breitbart falsely concludes that because the memo mentions that al Qaeda in Iraq (a precursor to ISIS) is fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Obama administration therefore supports ISIS.
The Obama administration, particularly through its State Department, has spoken at length about the complicated process of vetting the array of opposition groups in order to avoid supporting those with ties to extremism.
An: Media fell all over themselves criticizing what DonaldTrump "may have insinuated about @POTUS." But he's right: https://t.co/bIIdYtvZYw
White House spokesman Josh Earnest Monday responded to a question about Trump’s claims the same day. “Well, I think what is clear is, if you take a look at the president’s record, it speaks for itself,” Earnest said. “And that record includes a lot of dead terrorists.”
The Washington Post did an enormous fact-check and came to the conclusion that the Brietbart.com article was a pack of crap. This should come to the surprise of no-one who reads Brietbart.com and can recognize it as dishonest and willfully deceptive. For more information you can read the fact-check here, but in the Washington Post’s expert summary:
“This is what happens when people with little understanding of policy or context choose to willfully misinterpret documents. This is a relatively unimportant memo, with little information not in newspapers at the time. Rather than showing that the Obama administration is supporting terrorist groups, the information in the memo demonstrates why the administration was so reluctant to back rebel groups in Syria, often to the annoyance of Republican hawks.
Moreover, the memo was not sent directly to Clinton’s office, as asserted by Breitbart.
Trump, as a presumptive presidential nominee, really needs to rely on more accurate information when making factual claims.”
This all stems from Donald Trump’s debunked rekindling of the old conservative trope that President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim hellbent on overthrowing the government. Donald Trump said:
Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind,” Trump said on Fox News. “And the something else in mind — you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.
In a speech reacting to the massacre in Orlando where 50 people were killed, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump doubles down on his proposal to ban immigration of Muslims, and he expanded his proposal to “suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or allies.”
Speaking at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Trump did not mention foreign policy, discuss the fight against terrorist group ISIS, or propose solutions to combat hate or extremism, instead he said the attack early Sunday morning at the Pulse nightclub was the result of the U.S.’s immigration policies.
Trump said, reading from a teleprompter:
“The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here. That is a fact, and it’s a fact we need to talk about.”
The killer was an American born in New York but his father is an immigrant from Afghanistan.
Trump had originally said he would temporarily suspend immigration from Muslims, but he was starting to soften that idea in recent weeks. But after Sunday’s horror, he went further.
“The ban will be lifted when we as a nation are in a position to properly and perfectly screen those people coming into our country. We are importing radical Islamic terrorism into the west through a failed immigration system.”
Trump also attacked presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton throughout his speech, saying she “cannot be a friend of the gay community as long as she” supports current immigration policies. The shooting took place at a nightclub frequented by members of the LGBT community.
He said Clinton wants to “ban guns” and “abolish the Second Amendment.” (Clinton has never said she wants to ban guns or the Second Amendment but she does support banning assault weapons.)
Trump noted that he will “be meeting with the NRA … “to discuss how to ensure Americans have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror.”
Then she wants to “admit the very people who want to slaughter us,” he said.
He also said President Barack Obama has knee-capped the intelligence agencies.
“They’re not being allowed to do their job,” Trump said.
But since he was elected in 2008, the president has supported most surveillance mechanisms used by the intelligence agency implemented under the PATRIOT Act. He pushed for a five year extension that eventually passed Congress in December of 2012.
“As President I will give our intelligence community, law enforcement and military the tools they need to prevent terrorist attacks,” Trump said. “Truly, our President doesn’t know what he is doing. He has failed us, and failed us badly, and under his leadership, this situation will not get any better — it will only get worse.
He also said President Barack Obama has knee-capped the intelligence agencies.
“They’re not being allowed to do their job,” Trump said.
But since he was elected in 2008, the president has supported most surveillance mechanisms used by the intelligence agency implemented under the PATRIOT Act. He pushed for a five year extension that eventually passed Congress in December of 2012.
“As President I will give our intelligence community, law enforcement and military the tools they need to prevent terrorist attacks,” Trump said. “Truly, our President doesn’t know what he is doing. He has failed us, and failed us badly, and under his leadership, this situation will not get any better — it will only get worse
Donald Trump responded to the worst terror attack since 9/11 with a no-holds-barred attack on Muslims and Hillary Clinton that played loose with the facts and was rife with inflammatory rhetoric.
He claimed Clinton wanted to disarm Americans and let Islamic terrorists slaughter them, while seeming to overinflate the number of Syrian refugees and insinuating the perpetrator of the Orlando attack was a foreigner.
In a speech pulsating with tough talk that will likely please his supporters, the presumptive Republican nominee also renewed his call for a ban on Muslim migration into the United States — and extended it to cover all nations with a history of terrorism. Hinting at a huge expansion of presidential power, he vowed to impose such a system by using executive orders.
“The current politically correct response cripples our ability to talk and to think and act clearly,” Trump said framed by two American flags at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. “If we don’t get tough, and if we don’t get smart, and fast, we’re not going to have our country anymore. There will be nothing, absolutely nothing, left.”
Trump’s speech Monday was a clear attempt to use the fallout from Sunday’s attack in Florida that left 49 dead to position himself as a strong agent of change determined to flush out a culture of weakness and incompetence that he said had let terrorism fester and threatened the existence of U.S. culture itself.
It is a strategy that appealed to his base and helped him win the Republican primaries, and he is now deploying it after a rough couple of weeks signifying the start of the general election.
As part of that effort Monday, he delivered some of the most explosive and forceful political rhetoric uttered by a major U.S. political figure in many years, seeming to show little regard for facts.
Trump refused to name Omar Mateen, the killer who went on the rampage in an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, during his speech. But, adding a line not found in his prepared remarks, he said that he was born “an Afghan, of Afghan parents, who immigrated to the United States.” But the perpetrator of the Orlando massacre was born in New York to parents from Afghanistan.
The real estate magnate also appeared to equate all Muslims who seek to come to the United States with the perpetrators of recent terror attacks — another claim that seems to fly in the face of the evidence about a community that has been present in the U.S. for decades.
“We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer,” Trump said.
“Remember this, radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti- American.”
He also accused Clinton of endangering the country with her plans to bring in more foreigners.
“Hillary Clinton’s catastrophic immigration plan will bring vastly more radical Islamic immigration into this country, threatening not only our society but our entire way of life,” he charged. “When it comes to radical Islamic terrorism, ignorance is not bliss. It’s deadly — totally deadly.”
He accused Clinton of wanting to “allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country. They enslave women and they murder gays. I don’t want them in our country.”
And he repeated an unsubstantiated claim that Clinton wants to deny Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights.
Trump’s rhetoric — which was heavy on toughness but often short on policy details — contrasted sharply with the more nuanced and conventional response to the attack delivered earlier by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
But he made a case that the current policies were not working and were leaving America dangerously exposed to a tide of Islamic terror he said was coming its way — an argument that many in the GOP find compelling.
He has pointed to the political benefits of the rising fears of terrorism following other recent attacks.
In each instance, Trump sought to project both strength and a lack of concern for the reaction to his provocative rhetoric, calculating that both would help him rise in the polls during the Republican primary. Indeed, a majority of Republican voters agreed with Trump’s call to temporarily ban all foreign Muslims from entering the United States.
“Whenever there’s a tragedy, everything goes up, my numbers go way up because we have no strength in this country,” Trump said on CNN after last December’s San Bernardino shooting. “We have weak, sad politicians.”
Donald Trump’s speech was heavy on inflammatory rhetoric, light on details and facts.
Trump: “The Muslim ban is temporary. We have to find out what is going on?”
There are terrorists running around in Syria and Iraq. They have a book. They think that book is great. The use their book to justify killing others. Why is that so fucking hard to understand? Can he shut up about his stupid ban now?
Plus, aside from being completely and totally xenophobic, there is one major logical flaw with this policy. Meet Omar Mateen, 29 year old who killed at least 50 people in massacre Orlando. An American, born in New York.
Meet James Wesley Howell, 20 year old who was caught with cache of weapons, ammunition and explosive-making materials in his car and apparent plans to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood. An American, born in Indiana.
Exactly how would banning foreigners from entering the United States have solved the Orlando massacre or helped to prevent another possible shooting in Los Angeles by Americans?
Trump: A “tremendous flow” of Syrian refugees is pouring into the country free of screening also seemed to be an exaggeration.
Since May 1, 2016, 2,019 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the U.S., according to a State Department official, while only 1,736 were taken in over the first seven months of the fiscal year.
Interestingly, there are a lot of countries in the middle-east that are our friends, like Israel. So is Donald Trump inferring that Israelis are savages? If we remove our friends from the list of Middle-Eastern countries, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, then that leaves only 33,000 immigrants who were admitted into the United States in 2014 from the Middle-East. That would mean Trump is off by 67%.
We’ll have to revise Donald’s truth grade to an ‘F’.
Trump: “[Clinton] wants to take away Americans’ guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us.”
Clinton has called for universal background checks and stricter controls on firearms, but has never called for the abolition of the 2nd Amendment. Another false statement.
Trump: “Remember this, radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti- American.”
You know who has far more effective at being more anti-woman and anti-gay in this country? Republicans.
Donald Trump seemed to suggest that President Barack Obama had an ulterior motive concerning how he addresses and handles terror attacks, because he does not say the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Trump said Monday morning on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends”:
We’re led by a man who is very — look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind, you know, people can’t believe it.
People cannot believe, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and he can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.
Asked earlier why he had tweeted that Obama should resign because he wouldn’t say the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” Trump said:
He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It’s one or the other, and either one is unacceptable.
A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for an explanation of what Trump meant. But asked on NBC’s “Today Show” about the comments, Trump said that “a lot of people” thought Obama does not want to understand terrorism.
Well, there a lot of people who think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it, he doesn’t want to see what’s really happening.
And later, speaking to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Trump offered yet another explanation when questioned about what he meant.
I can’t define it. Nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody knows why (Obama) doesn’t have more anger, more competitive zeal. It’s almost like he’s falling asleep.
Trump has been on the defense since tweeting Sunday that he did not need congratulations for being “right” about the Orlando nightclub shooting. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that Obama should resign for not using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” Obama dubbed the shooting an “act of terror” and an “act of hate” in his response Sunday afternoon.
Reality
So instead of thinking diplomatically on foreign affairs and having a tangible policy, Trump instead turns to an old baseless conservative political smear from 2007 that Obama is a covert Muslim extremist.
For those who may be too young or have forgotten, Fox News was famous for their political smears against the then-Senator Obama saying things like:
None of these hand any kernel of truth. So it came to no surprise when Fox News defended Trump, writing:
The Washington Post story featured comments Trump made earlier in the day on Fox News, when he made a made a vague statement about Obama interpreted by some as a reference to his sympathies.
Interpreted by some? Excuse me? If Donald Trump was not trying to infer the right-wing conspiracy theory that President Obama does not act because he is an undercover Muslim, can Fox News please try to come up with a plausible explanation of what Trump was actually talking about?
Finally, Trump took the opportunity to bring up the old conservative trope that Obama refuses to acknowledge terrorism, and until he does we’ll be vulnerable to terrorists… or something. However there is a very good reason why President Obama, and before him George W. Bush, will not speak the words “radical Islamic terrorism” when referring to terrorist groups like ISIS. They may sound like small words to Republican critics like Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, but they have big meaning. The members of ISIS and other terrorist groups are desperate for legitimacy. This is why ISIS calls themselves the “Islamic State.” They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam. And they propagate the notion that America, and the West, is at war with Islam. For a President of the United States to infer that we are at war with the Islamic religion, it would have immediate consequences from our Muslim allies in the middle-east as well as give terrorist groups the legitimacy they exactly desire.
Donald Trump reversed his stance on U.S. military intervention in Libya on Sunday, saying he would have authorized “surgical” strikes to take out strongman Moammar Gaddafi — even though he’d previously said the world would be better with Gaddafi in power.
“I didn’t mind surgical. And I said surgical. You do a surgical shot and you take him out,” Trump said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
It was a notable change from the position he’d staked out at a Republican presidential debate in Texas in February.
“We would be so much better off if Gaddafi would be in charge right now,” Trump said then. He has also hit Clinton over the U.S. intervention in Libya in his stump speech.
It’s the second time Trump has reversed his position on Libya. In a 2011 video, Trump said that “on a humanitarian basis, immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively, and save the lives.”
On Sunday, he still sought to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.
“I wasn’t for what happened. Look at the way — I mean look at with Benghazi and all of the problems that we’ve had. It was handled horribly,” he said.
He added: “I was never for strong intervention. I could have seen surgical where you take out Gaddafi and his group.”
While Trump has changed positions on how the United States should have handled Gaddafi, he’s now advocating a sharp escalation in the U.S. military’s role in Libya.
He asked at a rally in Fresno, California, two weeks ago why the United States isn’t “bombing the hell out of” ISIS in Libya.
“ISIS has the oil. And then you say if ISIS has the oil, why aren’t we blockading so they can’t sell it? Why aren’t we bombing the hell out of … ” Trump said, stopping short as he pivoted to slamming Obama as “grossly incompetent.”
He’s also made blasting Clinton’s foreign policy judgment a staple on the campaign trail.
“She doesn’t have the temperament to be president. She’s got bad judgment. She’s got horribly bad judgment,” Trump said two weeks ago in Anaheim. “If you look at the war in Iraq, if you look at what she did with Libya, which was a total catastrophe.”
Clinton, meanwhile, unleashed on Trump as ill fit to serve as commander in chief on Thursday in a high-profile speech.
“He’s not just unprepared — he’s temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility,” Clinton said.
Trump said, “on a humanitarian basis, immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively, and save the lives.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duyvYNh-fLw
Republican Debate: Shouldn’t have taken him out – February, 25 2016
“We would be so much better off if Gaddafi would be in charge right now.”
Interview: Take him out – June 2016
“I didn’t mind surgical. And I said surgical. You do a surgical shot and you take him out.”
Hillary Clinton gave a speech on foreign policy that was a direct attack on Donald Trump, whose own foreign policy knowledge is lacking in such a way that CNN has now chosen to fact-check in real time so that viewers can see when he reneges on something he’s said, like his belief that Japan should have nukes.
Trump hasn’t taken well to her speech. He has attacked those who lauded it and gone after Clinton, too. Just as he did yesterday when he tried to claim that he never spoke out in favor of Japan getting its own nuclear arsenal, he tried to insist that everything Clinton said about him in her speech was a lie.
In Crooked Hillary's telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!
She responded with a link to her site, The Briefing. That link leads to a quote-by-quote breakdown of her speech. Each assertion made about Trump’s beliefs is backed up with a link to the interview or press conference during which he said it.
From saying he has no issue with abandoning our allies in NATO to the direct quote in which he insisted he knows more about ISIS than America’s own military generals do, the takedown is thorough and scathing.
Donald’s twitter response to Clinton’s evisceration of his foreign policy was largely seen as massive disappointment. Many pundits waited eagerly to see how he would respond, how he would defend his positions, and were left with a few poorly-spelled tweets attacking her for using a “telepromter.” Ironically, a few days later Donald Trump himself turned to a teleprompter for his primary victory.
So we wanted to take the time and fact-check both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
1. “This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia.”
2. “This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO, the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home.”
TRUE. In a March 30 town hall on MSNBC, Trump repeatedly suggested he will threaten NATO countries to bear a bigger burden, ultimately saying “If we have to walk, we have to walk.”
CHRIS MATTHEWS: We don’t need NATO?
TRUMP: Do you think — no, we don’t really need NATO in its current form. NATO is obsolete, and we’re spending disproportionately…
MATTHEWS: How do you walk from NATO, The Middle East, North Asia, China, all these relationships? Just drop them all?
TRUMP: Look, NATO is…
MATTHEWS: We have old deals we have to stick with.
TRUMP: … is 68 years old.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
TRUMP: OK, you have countries that are getting a free ride. You have countries that benefit from NATO much more than we do. We don’t benefit that much from NATO….Why aren’t they reimbursing us? Why aren’t they paying a good portion of the costs?
MATTHEWS: Well, that’s fine. It’s a good argument if you can get it. But if the alternative is we walk…
TRUMP: And we’ll get it, I’ll get it, I’ll get it. I’m the messenger.
MATTHEWS: If the alternative is we walk…
TRUMP:If we have to walk, we have to walk.
Comments start around the 6:30 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUClmJN4HhI
3. “He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008.”
TRUE. In an interview on CNBC, Donald Trump broke with tired clichés about the evils of federal debt accumulation. “I am the king of debt,” he said. “I love debt. I love playing with it.”
I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal,” Trump said. “And if the economy was good, it was good. So therefore, you can’t lose.
This idea would indeed cause a global financial crisis. By suggesting an unorthodox approach towards cutting the national debt… not paying it then renegotiate terms. Such a renegotiation risks creating financial turmoil because U.S. Treasuries are considered the safest assets on the planet and a major benchmark for valuing other securities. Calling into question their safety could cause borrowing rates to rise and create confusion in the markets.
Trump later said the media misunderstood his comments. However while Trump did not say the word ‘default’ he explained the exact definition of the word default in his proposal. And his new answer to print money can lead to higher inflation and was almost just as bad of an idea.
4. “He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture.”
TRUE. During a campaign event at the Sun City retirement community on February 17, 2016, Donald Trump said that he supports waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques because “torture works” in the questioning of terrorists.
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” Trump said. “Okay, folks? Torture — you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”
5. “He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or our admirals, our ambassadors, and other high officials, because he has quote, ‘a very good brain.’”
TRUE. Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded:
“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
“I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are,” Trump said. “But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff.”
Then as evidence, Trump claimed he had predicted the rise of Osama bin Laden, a statement for which was a total and absolute lie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2lBz0532wU
6. “He says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.”
TRUE. And complete and total nonsense.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
7. “He has the gall to say that prisoners of war like John McCain aren’t heroes.”
TRUE. At the Iowa Family Leadership Summit in July 2015, when moderator Frank Luntz brought up Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Donald Trump said:
He’s not a war hero.
Then went on to say.
He’s a war hero ’cause he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK? Perhaps he’s a war hero, but right now he’s said some very bad things about a lot of people.
Trump caught flack from every direction but refused to change his stance on McCain. When asked by ABC News whether he owes McCain an apology, Trump said:
No, not at all.
Then continued:
People that were not captured that went in and fought, nobody talks about them. Those are heroes also.
Later when confronted with his comments about McCain by a veteran and supporter at a rally, Trump flatly lied that he never made those comments.
8. “He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin…” and picks fights with our friends, including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico, and the Pope.”
“I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an ‘A,’ and our president is not doing so well. They did not look good together.”
9. “and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister…”
TRUE. On Good Morning Britain in May 2016, Trump was asked about comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the U.K.’s Conservative Party, who said that Trump’s suggestion Muslims should be barred from the United States was “divisive, stupid and wrong.”
“It looks like we’re not going to have a very good relationship,” if he were to win the presidential election in November.
“I think they’re very rude statements and frankly, tell him, I will remember those statements. They’re very nasty statements.”
11. the German chancellor…
TRUE. Donald Trump told Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon that he was highly critical of Germany’s Angela Merkel saying she is “a catastrophic leader” and that “she’ll be out if they don’t have a revolution.”
Everyone thought she was a really great leader and now she’s turned out to be this catastrophic leader. And she’ll be out if they don’t have a revolution.
12. the president of Mexico…
TRUE. Donald Trump sparked outrage among Mexicans and Latinos over comments he made when he kicked off his Presidential bid when he claimed Mexico sending its “rapists” and criminals to the U.S. and calling for a human-proof wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to keep them out.
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Mexican President Pena Nieto attacked the “populism” of the Trump campaign, which he said sought to put forward “very easy, simple solutions to problems that are obviously not that easy to solve,” and then compared Trump to Hitler:
“And there have been episodes in human history, unfortunately, where these expressions of this strident rhetoric have only led to very ominous situations in the history of humanity. That’s how Mussolini got in, that’s how Hitler got in, they took advantage of a situation, a problem perhaps, which humanity was going through at the time, after an economic crisis. And I think what (they) put forward ended up at what we know today from history, in global conflagration. We don’t want that happening anywhere in the world”
13. and the Pope.
TRUE. Trump faulted Pope Francis for planning to visit the Mexican border to pray with migrants:
I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico. I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is. They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.
Pope Francis then made the observation that that Mr. Trump “is not Christian” in proposing deportations and a wall with Mexico.
Donald Trump responded saying Francis’ criticisms were “disgraceful” and “unbelievable,” said the pontiff will “wish and pray” that the real estate mogul were President “if and when the Vatican is attacked, and he contended that the Mexican government had hoodwinked the pope into criticizing him.
14. “He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.”
I know Russia well. I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, Miss Universe contest, which was a big, big, incredible event. An incredible success.
