Category: Not Factual

Donald Trump Doubles Down on False Iraq War Opposition Claim

Donald Trump on Thursday defended his statement that he was publicly opposed to the Iraq war before it started — despite evidence contradicting that claim.

The GOP nominee also said he would have voted against the Iraq war had he been in Congress at the time of the 2003 invasion, a new line in Trump’s attempt to make the war a signature focus of the presidential campaign.

“Had I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a vote in opposition,” Trump said before framing the war as a referendum on Hillary Clinton’s judgment.

Trump, at a charter school here to deliver a speech about education, brought up interviews in 2003 and 2004 in which he slowly changed his stance on the war. The invasion began on March 20, 2003.

In Sept. 11, 2002 in an interview on the Howard Stern show, Trump was asked if he supported an invasion of Iraq and responded: “Yeah, I guess so,” and “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” The interview was earlier reported by Buzzfeed News, which posted audio of the exchange.

“I opposed going in, and I did oppose it. Despite the media saying, ‘no, yes, no,’ I opposed going in,” Trump said Thursday. “I was opposed to the war from the beginning, long after my interview with Howard Stern,” Trump said.

The Republican nominee has been criticized for seeming revisionist history on his position on the Iraq war, which Trump has used to attack Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize the war when she was a U.S. senator.

Esquire, the magazine that published a 2004 interview in which Trump opposed the war a year after it began, earlier this month accused the GOP nominee of “lying” about claims he was always against the war.

Clinton at an NBC Commander-in-Chief forum Wednesday said the decision to to war in Iraq, and her vote to authorize military action, was a mistake. Trump called the Iraq issue “one of the biggest differences in this race.”

“Here’s the bottom line. I was a private citizen,” Trump said. “I had no access to briefings or great intelligence survey that she did … But I didn’t have access to all of the intelligence information that she did and everybody else did.”

Though it wasn’t necessarily long after the September 2002 Howard Stern interview, Trump did begin shifting his stance in early 2003. But it’s not clear that he was strongly against the war before it happened.

Trump on Thursday brought up a January 2003 interview with Fox’s Neil Cavuto, before the war began, in which he said that maybe President George W. Bush should be more focused on the U.S. economy.

“Well, he has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps shouldn’t be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, you know,” Trump said, according to the website PolitiFact. “He’s under a lot of pressure. I think he’s doing a very good job. But, of course, if you look at the polls, a lot of people are getting a little tired. I think the Iraqi situation is a problem. And I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned.”

Trump then cited an interview with the Washington Post from March 25, 2003 — days after the war began — in which he called the situation “a mess.”

However, in an interview four days earlier, again with Cavuto, Trump expressed optimism on the economy in the aftermath of the war and said the invasion “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint, and I think this is really nothing compared to what you’re going to see after the war is over.”

When asked to clarify what he meant, he told Cavuto “I think Wall Street’s just going to go up like a rocket, even beyond.”

Asked if he stood by those 2003 comments calling the invasion a “tremendous success,” Trump told reporters at his Thursday event, “You know what that meant,” before walking away.

When asked what that meant, Trump did not turn around to clarify.

At issue in his claim that he would have voted “no” on the war if he were in Congress is the fact that Trump did not express a negative opinion of the war until 2003. The vote to authorize the Iraq War was held months earlier, in October 2002.

This is the first time Trump has gone to such lengths to prove his claim, despite being asked at earlier points in his candidacy to provide proof of his stances prior to the war.

As he has on multiple earlier occasions, Trump cited a 2004 interview with Esquire, in which he gave his most forceful critique of the war in Iraq.

Trump read a quote from that article Thursday, saying, “Absolute quote: ‘Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in.’ This is right after the war started.”

In the 2004 article, Trump also expressed his doubts that Iraq would become a democracy and said: “Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over.”

Esquire has since added an editor’s note to the online version of the article disputing any link between the piece and Trump’s claim of opposing the war in Iraq before it started.

“Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed to have been against the Iraq War from the beginning, and he has cited this story as proof,” the editor’s note reads. “The Iraq War began in March 2003, more than a year before this story ran, thus nullifying Trump’s timeline.”

And the magazine on Aug. 15 published an accompanying article titled “Once Again, Trump Claims He Was Always Against the Iraq War. He’s Lying.” — with an line below reading “And now he’s throwing Esquire into the mix.”

(h/t NBC News)

Reality

When we lay out the timeline of events, we can see that Trump is indeed lying when he said he was always against the Iraq War.

Media

 

Donald Trump Will Not Stop Lying About The Iraq War

Of all the lies Donald Trump likes to tell while running for president, the one about being an early opponent of the 2003 Iraq War may be his favorite. Despite well-documented evidence that the casino mogul spoke in support of the ill-fated war in the lead-up to the invasion, reporters have repeatedly let the Republican presidential candidate tell a revisionist version of his past stance without pushing back on the claim.

That sequence repeated itself on Wednesday night during NBC’s televised town hall, the first event featuring the two presidential candidates in back-to-back question-and-answer sessions. When it was Trump’s turn, NBC’s Matt Lauer asked the Republican candidate what about his past experiences has prepared him to be the country’s commander in chief.

Trump followed a familiar routine of dodging the question, offering vague assurances of his success, and eventually, outright lying.

“Well, I think the main thing is, I have great judgment. I have good judgment. I know what’s going on. I’ve called so many of the shots. And I happened to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq ― from ― you can look at Esquire magazine from ‘04, you can look at before that. I was against the war in Iraq because I said it would totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It has absolutely been a disastrous war.”

Lauer, who is surely aware of the factual inaccuracy of Trump’s claim, could have pointed out that 2004 was after the invasion, and therefore more of an example of Monday-morning quarterbacking than good judgment. He could have pointed to earlier interviews in which Trump voiced support for the war. Or he could have asked the candidate for another example from before the 2003 start of the war.

Instead, he just moved on to the next question.

Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski was the first to uncover Trump’s earlier remarks about the war in Iraq. In 2000, Trump called for a “principled and tough” policy toward “outlaw” states like Iraq, Buzzfeed found. In 2002, Howard Stern asked Trump outright if he favored invading Iraq. “Yeah, I guess so,” Trump said at the time. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

By 2004 it had become clear that ousting Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein was only the first part of a protracted U.S. military effort there, and Trump was offering a new view on the invasion. In August 2004 he told Esquire’s Cal Fussman:

“Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county? C’mon. Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he’ll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn’t have.”

Lauer is not the first reporter to let Trump get away with his revisionist account of his early stance on the Iraq War. Buzzfeed later reported that several major news outlets ― CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Washington Post ― have, on at least one occasion, offered a platform for Trump to insist he was always against the Iraq War without correcting the candidate.

This is no small oversight. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to secure the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2008, in part, because she voted for the disastrous war that her opponent, Barack Obama, had opposed as a senator.

In this election, voters don’t have the option of electing a candidate who demonstrated better judgment about whether to invade Iraq. But during the town hall on Wednesday, Clinton owned up to her miscalculation on the Iraq War ― and reminded voters of her opponent’s refusal to do so.

“I have taken responsibility for my decision,” Clinton said. “He refuses to take responsibility for his support ― that is a judgment issue.”

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

In Sept. 11, 2002 in an interview on the Howard Stern show, Trump was asked if he supported an invasion of Iraq and responded: “Yeah, I guess so,” and “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” The interview was earlier reported by Buzzfeed News, which posted audio of the exchange.

Esquire, the magazine that published a 2004 interview in which Trump opposed the war a year after it began, earlier this month accused the GOP nominee of “lying” about claims he was always against the war.

Trump Took Millions From Saudi Government While Trashing Clinton Foundation

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly made millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, The New York Daily News reported.

A Daily News investigation found that in June 2001, the GOP nominee sold the 45th floor of Trump World Tower to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $4.5 million.The apartments became part of the Saudi Mission to the United Nations in 2008, according to the report.

At the time of the sale, the five apartment that were sold had yearly common charges of $85,585 for building amenities, meaning Trump has been paid at least $5.7 million by the Saudi government since 2001 — if those rates stayed the same.

The Daily News investigation also found Osama Bin Laden’s half-brother, Shafiq Bin Laden, lived in an apartment in Trump Tower for four months in 1986. He paid an $8,500 security deposit for the apartment.

The GOP nominee has in the past criticized his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, for accepting money from Saudi Arabia for the Clinton Foundation.

“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump said in a June Facebook post.

“I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”

(h/t The Hill)

Donald Trump Refuses to Talk About His Role in the Racist Birther Movement

Years after the issue was debunked, Donald Trump still refuses to back away from the birther conspiracy he helped fuel.

“I don’t talk about it,” Trump told NBC’s Ali Vitali on Monday.

Trump made similar comments to “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert last year.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

First of all, President Obama was born in Hawaii. Shut up.

And second, Donald Trump rose to political fame with the questioning of the legitimacy of America’s first black President, with a clear origin in racial prejudice.

In March 2011 when Trump appeared on “The View” and asked the panel, “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” While on Fox News’s “On the Record,” Trump demanded, “I want to see his birth certificate.” In an interview with NBC’s “Today Show,” he revealed, “I’m starting to think that he was not born here.”

And in the most irony of ironies, Trump has refused to release his own birth certificate and passport information.

2011 Birther Study on Racism

A 2011 study of birthers in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed racial prejudice played a substantial role in those who believed the claims that Obama wasn’t an American.

“The influence of racial prejudice in contemporary U.S. society is typically manifested in subtle, indirect forms of bias. Due to prevailing norms of equality, most Whites attempt to avoid appearing biased in their evaluations of Blacks, in part because of a genuine desire to live up to their egalitarian standards, but also because of concern regarding social censure. As a consequence, Whites’ prejudice is more likely to be expressed in discriminatory responses when these actions can be justified by other factors.”

Trump Fraudulently Photoshops Poll in Tweet

Donald Trump’s campaign can’t seem to get out of its own way on social media.

On Monday morning, Trump began heralding poll results from Iowa and the key swing state of Ohio. He mentioned the results at a rally and tweeted out nifty graphics on his account to share the numbers.

The only problem: he kept crediting an outlet that doesn’t commission such polls: FiveThirtyEight.

Trump credited Nate Silver’s electoral wizardry for showing he had a lead over Clinton of 46 percent to 43 percent in Ohio and a 44 percent to 41 percent lead in Iowa.

Later, his campaign also tweeted out the poll results, again crediting FiveThirtyEight. Those tweets have since been deleted and retweeted — screenshots are below.

FiveThirtyEight didn’t commission the polls, as noted by Nate Silver and the site’s senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten. Both analysts pointed out that Trump was probably citing the results of the most recent Ipsos/Reuters poll of likely voters from those states.

Indeed, a look at FiveThirtyEight’s current forecast shows Clinton with around a 60 percent chance of winning Ohio and Trump with just over a 50 percent chance of winning Iowa.

As for the Ipsos/Reuters poll of likely voters, however — it actually shows Clinton as the favorite to win the election in November.

Later, Trump sent out another tweet, appropriately citing the Ipsos/Reuters poll with attribution to FiveThirtyEight, thought not its forecast that Trump would lose if the election were held today.

In July, the campaign found itself at the center of a much larger uproar when Trump tweeted a Photoshopped image of Hillary Clinton with anti-Semitic overtones. It was later deleted and replaced.

His son-in-law and political adviser, Jared Kushner, responded in the newspaper he owns, the New York Observer. “If my father in law’s fast-moving team was careless in choosing an image to retweet,” he wrote, “well part of the reason it’s so shocking is that it’s the actual candidate communicating with the American public rather than the armies of handlers who poll-test ordinary candidates’ every move.”

We’ll chalk it down as yet another reminder to be skeptical of what you see on the internet. And what you read in the polls — it’s still a long two months until Nov. 8.

(h/t Mashable)

Trump Surrogate Admits Falsifying Military Service and College Degree

A top Donald Trump surrogate admitted to falsifying some of his professional accomplishments after a contentious confrontation with CNN anchor Victor Blackwell.
South Carolina preacher Mark Burns, who regularly introduces Trump at his campaign events, had listed on his church’s website that he had a Bachelor of Science degree and served six years in the Army Reserve.

Burns, however, was never in the Army Reserve. He was in the South Carolina National Guard, from which he was discharged in 2008, CNN found.

As far as a Bachelor’s degree, North Greenville University told CNN he only attended the school for one semester. Burns admitted that he did not finish his degree when CNN asked him about it.

When CNN confronted Burns about the various professional and social exaggerations he had featured on his biography, Burns first said the page had “obviously” been either “manipulated or either hacked or added.”

But the site host, Wix, said there was no evidence of a hack.

“This is not fair at all,” Burns told Blackwell during the interview. “I thought we were doing a profile and all of a sudden you’re here to try to destroy my character.”

“I’m not here to destroy your character,” Blackwell replied.

At one point, Burns told Blackwell he believed the interview was off the record, to which Blackwell responded, “I didn’t agree to that.”

Burns abruptly ended the interview by walking away.

CNN followed up with the Trump campaign and was provided with a statement from Burns:

“As a young man starting my church in Greenville, South Carolina, I overstated several details of my biography because I was worried I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a new pastor. This was wrong, I wasn’t truthful then and I have to take full responsibility for my actions,” Burns’ statement reads.

Burns said he did not know if he had been vetted by the Trump campaign.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Donald Trump wants to have “extreme vetting” for immigrants, but he can’t even successfully vet his own team.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GmDqeZr97w

After Reigniting His Immigration Tough Talk, Trump Flip-Flops Again on Softening

Just hours after reviving his harsh rhetoric on immigration, Donald Trump on Thursday morning insisted that there is actually “quite a bit of softening” in how he’s approaching his signature campaign issue.

The Republican nominee’s latest comment — to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham, no less — makes it even harder to pin down just where Trump is landing on the hot-button issue, and amplifies the pick-what-you-want-to-hear nature of his talk on immigration.

“You’re going to be asked this, so I might as well ask it,” Ingraham said to Trump during a radio interview. “The line last week [was] you were softening on immigration, then you come out with a very specific, very pro-enforcement plan last night. Where’s the softening?”

Passing on the chance to disavow the prior “softening” narrative, Trump insisted instead, “Oh, there’s softening. Look, we do it in a very humane way, and we’re going to see with the people that are in the country. Obviously I want to get the gang members out, the drug peddlers out, I want to get the drug dealers out. We’ve got a lot of people in this country that you can’t have, and those people we’ll get out.”

“And then we’re going to make a decision at a later date once everything is stabilized,” Trump continued. “I think you’re going to see there’s really quite a bit of softening.”

The comments came after Trump consoled grieving immigration hard-liners worried Trump was flirting with amnesty for undocumented immigrants, as he delivered a fiery speech that could have been ripped from his early campaign days.

Speaking from Phoenix after having visited with the Mexican president, Trump railed for nearly 90 minutes about how undocumented immigrants are hurting America. He promised to build his border wall, make Mexico pay for it, and to empower a massive new “deportation task force” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to round up undocumented immigrants.

“People will know that you can’t just smuggle in, hunker down, and wait to be legalized. Those days are over,” Trump declared.

“Wow. This doesn’t sound like ‘softening.’ GO, TRUMP!!!” tweeted conservative commentator Ann Coulter on Wednesday night.

“I think it’s arguably the best day of his campaign,” said Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative.

Trump’s hard-edged speech also managed to alienate several of his Hispanic supporters, who quickly distanced themselves from the Republican nominee.

“I was a strong supporter of Donald Trump when I believed he was going to address the immigration problem realistically and compassionately,” said Jacob Monty, a member of Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council who has aggressively made the Latino case for Trump. “What I heard today was not realistic and not compassionate.”

But embedded in Trump’s speech, underneath all the bluster, was still some of the talk that days before had generated a flood of headlines that Trump was easing up on his severe immigration policies.

While Trump had previously threatened to use a deportation force to round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants, the billionaire on Wednesday night emphasized that his new deportation task force would focus on deporting criminals — an approach very similar to President Barack Obama’s.

“Our enforcement priorities will include removing criminals, gang members, security threats, visa overstays, public charges,” Trump said.

And he said that “anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation,” but he did not say that all undocumented immigrants would have to live in fear of having their door knocked on by his triple-strength ICE deportation team.

While much of Trump’s talk on immigration has been difficult to parse, some of the elements of Wednesday night’s speech sounded similar to his comments to Fox News’ Sean Hannity and CNN’s Anderson Cooper that landed him in hot water with conservatives last week.

“It’s a process. You can’t take 11 [million] at one time and just say ‘boom, you’re gone,'” Trump told Cooper last Thursday, as he defended his latest immigration comments. “I don’t think it’s a softening. I’ve had people say it’s a hardening, actually.”

Trump on Ingraham Thursday morning again paired his talk to being “very humane” with tougher talk of securing the border — throwing meat to conservatives and independents alike.

Trump added that he feels “strongly that we have to stabilize the border, we have to absolutely stabilize the border and we have to have a strong border, otherwise we don’t have a country.”

Later in the show, a caller tried to explain what Trump meant by those remarks, as conservatives continue to try to bend Trump’s comments to their liking.

“I don’t want people to freak out about that. He’s just talking about there’s not gonna be those Bill Clinton and Elian Gonzalez kid from Cuba-type stories going around, going into houses with machine guns and stuff,” a man from Florida said.

Ingraham concurred, adding her own interpretation in the process.

“Yeah, I think what he’s saying is the previous record of open border isn’t gonna exist, and you know, we’re not gonna be running around with vans, throwing people into vans, unless they’re hardened criminals,” she said. “And if you’re arrested for a crime, you can’t stay in the country. But the idea that you’re gonna just run around with vans and throw fruit-pickers into the back of the vans, that’s not gonna happen. So I think that’s what he was talking about.”

(h/t Politico)

Media

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

Trump Ditches Press For Mexico Trip

Members of the press corps assigned to cover Donald Trump’s campaign have criss-crossed the country on the trail with the GOP nominee for months, but they won’t be in Mexico for Trump’s big meeting on Wednesday with President Enrique Peña Nieto.

The last-minute jaunt, which was announced late Tuesday, further strained the campaign’s relations with the press corps. Although there is a chartered plane for members of the Trump press corps, it was redirected to Phoenix ahead of the GOP nominee’s scheduled speech on immigration there on Wednesday evening.

A New York Times reporter tweeted that journalists got no heads-up about the trip and the campaign made no effort to get them to Mexico:

The move left reporters “seething” on a daily press call with Trump spokesman Jason Miller, who said only that the journalists’ complaints were “noted,” an anonymous source on the call told Politico.

The source also told Politico that the campaign didn’t reach out to the five major TV networks about covering the meeting until 3 a.m. Wednesday. Although some reporters were weighing the possibility of chartering their own flight to Mexico, they ultimately decided against it, in part because they say the campaign hadn’t indicated there would be any press availability:

During a Wednesday morning appearance on “Fox and Friends,” campaign manager Kellyanne Conway further roiled frustrated members of the press by saying Trump would take questions from the Mexican and American press during the visit after all.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond Wednesday morning to a request from TPM seeking clarification on the decision.

Here’s what some other members of the press were saying about the Mexico trip:

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Mexican president fact-checks Trump then disputes him over border wall payment discussion

Donald Trump flew into a nation he has constantly berated during his campaign to meet President Enrique Peña Nieto and said they discussed a wall Trump has vowed to build on the US southern border, but not his demand that Mexico pay for it — an assertion the Mexican president later disputed.

“Who pays for the wall? We didn’t discuss,” Trump had said when asked by a reporter during a news conference following their meeting in Mexico City. “We did discuss the wall. We didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That’ll be for a later date.”

But Peña Nieto later claimed the two had discussed the wall and who would pay for it — and he had “made it clear” to Trump it wouldn’t be Mexico.

“At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” Peña Nieto tweeted, after their meeting Wednesday.

He added that his conversation with the Republican nominee then moved on to other topics in a respectful fashion.

Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser, called the meeting “the first part of the discussion and a relationship builder” between the two men, after Peña Nieto tweeted.
“It was not a negotiation, and that would have been inappropriate. It is unsurprising that they hold two different views on this issue, and we look forward to continuing the conversation,” he said in a statement.

In subsequent interviews in Mexico, Peña Nieto reiterated his version of events. He told CNN affiliate Televisa in an interview late Wednesday some of the positions Trump has taken “are a threat to Mexico.”

He also told the outlet he was very clear with Trump about the subject of a wall at the border and insisted Mexico would not pay for it and he made Trump aware that the people of Mexico had been “very insulted.”

Peña Nieto, speaking alongside Trump during their joint appearance, twice stressed the “responsibility” he has to defend Mexican people around the world and said Trump has made “assertions that regrettably had hurt and have affected Mexicans.”

“The Mexican people have felt hurt by the comments that have been made. But I am sure that his genuine interest is to build a relationship that will give both of our society’s better welfare,” Peña Nieto said.

Trump apparently left his tough deal-making persona at home as he received a presidential-style news conference on foreign soil while on a high-risk trip to Mexico on Wednesday.

The visit appeared to be an attempt to bolster Trump’s credentials as a potential world leader, following searing attacks on his temperament by his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. The spur-of-the-moment trip also came hours before Trump was due to deliver a speech in Arizona meant to clarify his murky immigration policy amid signs he is softening his prior promise to deport 11 million undocumented migrants.

Trump’s claim that they didn’t discuss who would pay for the wall — despite his call for Mexico to finance it being a central theme of his campaign and one he frequently uses to fire up his supporters — appeared to be a noteworthy omission from Wednesday’s conversation when he mentioned it at their joint appearance.

The cost is one that Peña Nieto has previously refused to shoulder, just one of many issues where the two men have clashed. Peña Nieto, who has previously compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, greeted him courteously and said he was committed to working with whomever Americans elect as their next president in November.

But turning the tables on Trump, he gave the billionaire an earful on trade, said illegal immigration from Mexico to the US peaked years ago and complained of the torrent of guns that he said crossed the border and worsened Mexico’s drug wars.

Nieto said in an interview late Wednesday that some of the positions Donald Trump has taken “are a threat to Mexico.” He told CNN affiliate Televisa that he made Trump aware that the people of Mexico had been “very insulted” by his comments.

Trump’s backers were left to defend his decision not to mention his demand that Mexico pay for the border wall after the visit. Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “What difference does it make? The wall’s important no matter who pays.”

While Trump’s decision not to raise who would pay for the wall appeared to undercut his deal-making swagger, it could also reassure some wavering Republican voters who dislike Clinton but are not yet convinced Trump possesses the restraint and sobriety required of a US president.

The sight of Trump alongside the Mexican president provided the photo-op that the campaign appears to have banked on despite not knowing how the candidate would be received.

Still, the Clinton campaign came out swinging, accusing Trump of failing to make good on his pledge to make Mexico pay for the wall by not raising the issue.

“Donald Trump has made his outlandish policy of forcing Mexico to pay for his giant wall the centerpiece of his campaign. But at the first opportunity to make good on his offensive campaign promises, Trump choked,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said in a statement.

“What we saw today from a man who claims to be the ultimate ‘deal maker’ is that he doesn’t have the courage to advocate for his campaign promises when he’s not in front of a friendly crowd,” Podesta said, before accusing Trump of wanting to build a costly wall at American taxpayers’ expense.

Podesta later added: “It turns out Trump didn’t just choke, he got beat in the room and lied about it.”

Peña Nieto began his remarks alongside Trump by saying the two held a constructive exchange of views even though “we might not agree on everything.”

He then launched into a detailed defense of US-Mexican trade and its benefit to both countries delivered by the North American Free Trade Agreement — a common punching bag for Trump on the campaign trail.

The Mexican leader told Trump that both the US and Mexico had benefited from NAFTA, saying more than six million US jobs rely on exports to Mexico.

“I don’t think that commerce must be considered a zero sum game, so that only one wins and the other one loses,” he said, though added he was prepared to make the two-decades-old deal, which also includes Canada, better for both nations.

Trump was also told by his host that Mexicans deserve everybody’s respect wherever they are, in an apparent reference to the GOP nominee’s harsh rhetoric towards undocumented migrants.

Trump, who listened to his host’s long remarks with a somber look on his face while a woman stood beside him at the podium translating for him, said that Mexicans were “spectacular” people when it was his turn to talk.

But he laid bare disagreements between the two men when he said it was imperative to stop the “tremendous outflow” of jobs from the United States over the southern border, and that NAFTA had benefited Mexico more than the US. And he stood up for America’s right to build a “physical barrier or wall” on its territory to stop illegal immigration and drug traffickers. Trump warned that NAFTA would have to be renegotiated.

Trump’s calls for deporting all undocumented workers, labeling many Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “criminals,” and plan to build a wall along the border — that Mexico would pay for — have earned him withering criticism from Peña Nieto, as well as many independents and moderate Republicans.

But they are central pillars of his campaign, which has galvanized his white working class base behind his White House bid. Those most fervently opposed to immigration have pushed back against the rumored “softening” in his stance that he could articulate on Wednesday night.

Trump, speaking from prepared remarks, was far more measured than in his campaign trail appearances. Though he mostly stuck his positions on renegotiating NAFTA and halting illegal immigration, he was also conciliatory. He referred to illegal immigration from Central America rather than just from Mexico. He said a secure border barrier would benefit both nations. And he spoke of the flight of jobs not from the United States but from also from Mexico and Central America to overseas economies.

It is not unusual for presidential candidates to venture abroad during a campaign. Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney made trips to bolster their foreign policy credentials in 2008 and 2012.

But Trump’s approach — like the rest of his campaign — is highly unorthodox. Presidential candidates do not typically show up in foreign capitals for talks with leaders without intense preparation and highly choreographed game plans. Often, the parameters of a meeting are settled in advance. This trip was announced Tuesday night.

In addition, they usually visit strong allies where they are assured of a warm reception that will make for positive media coverage rather than sitting down with a leader who has compared them to Hitler and has disparaged their policy proposals.

Trump’s style, however, is more impulsive and unpredictable. He had never before met a foreign leader in an official capacity. So his trip represented something of a risk. Even though the meeting with Peña Nieto was private, he has no control over how the Mexican leader will address the public and how his officials will brief journalists about it afterward.

The trip was also unusual for not including his traveling press corps and coming against the advice of US diplomats.

The campaign’s decision to travel to a foreign country — one rife with security risks for a candidate who has stoked tensions with his rhetoric on Mexican immigrants — without reporters following close behind marks an unprecedented moment in the coverage of major party presidential nominees.

In addition, staff at the US Embassy in Mexico advised the Trump campaign against making such a hastily arranged trip, suggesting it would be logistically difficult to organize on such short notice, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

(h/t CNN)

Trump campaign says it is sad “Crooked” Hillary’s campaign resorted to name calling

Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway laced into David Plouffe on Tuesday, days after the former campaign adviser to Barack Obama called the GOP nominee a “psychopath.”

Responding to that comment and Hillary Clinton’s speech tying Trump to white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan last week, Conway had three words on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade & Friends”: “Shame on them.”

“I mean, the name-calling has reached a fever pitch and it just tells ya, they got nothin’. They got no game,” Conway told host Brian Kilmeade, suggesting that if Clinton “were really strong on the issues” and if Plouffe “was that proud of his boss Barack Obama’s Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, then he would go out there and he’d talk about that.”

Rather than calling Trump a “psychopath,” a notion against which “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd pushed back Sunday, Conway remarked that Plouffe would have said that Clinton’s opponent “shouldn’t win, because Obamacare’s going so well, everybody’s so happy, United HealthCare and Aetna didn’t just realize billions of dollars in losses and pull out of 40-some exchanges.”

“They can’t. They don’t have the issue set that favors them” and thus they resort to name-calling, Conway said. “And I have to say, look, politics is not a tea party. It’s rough and tumble. We all get that, Brian. But to go out there and do guilt by association and to accuse people of having malice in their heart towards other people with no evidence, and then to do exactly what the American Psychological Association has asked people not to do, which is to, which is to certify somebody as mentally unfit or a psychopath. It’s just beyond the pale, and nobody calls them on it.”

Conway then thanked Kilmeade for calling out the issue, turning her ire to the media’s recent coverage of Trump after he repeatedly proclaimed that Clinton is a “bigot” for her treatment of African-American and Hispanic voters.

“All week long, it’s that Donald Trump referred to Hillary Clinton with one word and everybody, you know, their hair is on fire. Donald Trump is called every name in the book plus, before he gets out of bed in the morning. And yet that’s justifiable, that’s acceptable,” Conway remarked sarcastically. “Brian, look at these articles that are everywhere in the last week or two where mainstream media, so-called reporters, quote unquote, are outwardly saying that Donald Trump pushes their limits of objectivity, that they are challenging each other to cover him more aggressively because they believe he should not be president and commander in chief. Guess what, folks? That’s not their job. Their job is to report the news to you and not decide who should and who should not be president and then try to make that conclusion a reality.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

If you can’t tell by the title of this article, Conway’s assertion is pretty bold coming from a campaign that was built on insulting and name-calling its way to the top. At Republican debates and during various campaign stops, Trump would roll out clever nicknames for his political rivals. Among them; “Lyin’ Ted” (Ted Cruz), “Little Marco” Marco Rubio), “Crooked Hillary” (Hillary Clinton), and “Goofy Elizabeth Warren.”

Here are a few other examples of Trump hurling insults:

JUNE 16, 2015 – Trump officially threw his clown hat into the circus that would soon be the 2016 race with a jaw-dropping, ad-libbed speech in which he insulted Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” derided foreign countries and lambasted President Obama and other American leaders as “losers.”

JULY 18, 2015 – In one of his cruelest, and strangest attacks, Trump, at a conservative summit in Iowa, ripped John McCain, a former prisoner of war. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said dismissively of McCain, who spent more than five years being tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and suffered permanent injuries as a result. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

AUG. 6, 2015 – Tenacious moderator Megyn Kelly kicked off the event by reminding Trump that he’d called “women you don’t like, ‘fat pigs, ‘dogs, slobs and disgusting animal.’ Trump interjected, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” setting off tensions between he, the conservative news network, and the entire GOP establishment that have yet to fully cool.

AUG. 7, 2015 – Trump, clearly affected by Kelly’s aggressive questioning of him during the initial GOP debate, was quick to go on the attack against the respected journalist. In an interview the night after the debate, Trump blasted Kelly for bringing up his years of piggish, anti-women remarks, as she questioned him during the Republican debate. He even suggested disgustingly that her ire was a product of menstrual cycle. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her – wherever,” Trump said

NOV. 24, 2015 – Trump mocked reporter’s physical handicap. “Now the poor guy, you ought to see the guy,” Trump said, mimicking New York Times (and former Daily News) reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that limits the movement of the joints and weakens the muscles around them. “‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. I don’t remember,'” Trump said, gyrating his arms as he mocked Kovaleski’s movements.

AUG 1, 2016 – Trump insults Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son, Army Captain Humayun Khan, died in the line of duty in 2004, after they criticized him during a speech at the Democratic National Convention. Trump bizarrely claimed his real estate empire was a “sacrifice” and questioned why Ghazala Khan stayed silent on stage while her husband spoke. “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably – maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me,” Trump said, suggesting that the Khans’ Muslim faith barred the woman from speaking out.

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