Donald Trump’s ‘Fiduciary Duty’ Tax Rate Excuse is Nonsense

There’s no evidence yet that Donald Trump violated any tax laws with his mammoth $916 million reported loss in 1995 when he paid no taxes. But the claim by Trump and his surrogates that he had a “fiduciary duty” to his family and investors to pay as little tax as possible is pretty silly.

Fiduciary duty, of course, applies to public company executives who have to maximize shareholder value by paying the lowest legal rate. But this has to do with corporate tax returns, the question raised by the New York Times is about his personal tax return, which are not the same thing.

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Either Donald Trump does not know there is a difference between personal and corporate tax filings, he doesn’t understand what the word “fiduciary” means, or he is banking on the idea that you don’t understand the different tax fillings by stringing together a nonsensical sentence.

Giuliani: Trump ‘Better For the United States Than a Woman’

Donald Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani on Sunday suggested that a man such as Donald Trump would be a better president “than a woman.”

“Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her emails,” the former New York City mayor said on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.

Giuliani’s statements come on the heels of a week during which the Republican nominee has been criticized by Hillary Clinton’s campaign for comments he has made about women. At Monday’s debate, Clinton said Trump had insulted former Miss Universe Alicia Machado by calling her “Miss Piggy.” Trump and Giuliani both criticized Machado and tried to justify Trump’s comments about how much weight Machado had gained.

Giuliani told Stephanopoulos that Clinton was “programmed” to bring up Machado’s story.

“Then she mentioned the woman’s name, the model’s name, and then she made it appear as if [moderator] Lester Holt had brought it up. She had obviously been programmed to bring that up,” Giuliani said.

In addition, the Trump surrogate also said that if Clinton is going to attack Trump on how he “deals with women,” the GOP nominee’s campaign will discuss how the former secretary of state “deals with women.”

“We have to respond by how she deals with women, which is to take money from governments that kill women, take money from governments that stone women, take money from governments that have women who can’t drive cars,” he said. “Not just money, millions and tens of millions of dollars from countries in which women are treated like property and killed when they get raped.”

“And so now, basically, it’s ‘Don’t lecture me, Hillary, on feminism, because you’re a phony.'”The Trump and Clinton campaigns both released ads targeting women this past week.

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Giuliani also claimed this was a “jobless” recovery. This is not factual at all. Over 15.1 million jobs have been created since Obama took office in 2009.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWrpT6HO3uM

Trump Mocks Clinton Stumble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

https://youtu.be/mP1ArOF7YKE

Trump, Under Oath, Claimed Mexicans Are Rapists

Video footage from a legal deposition of Donald Trump released Friday suggests the Republican presidential candidate planned to call Mexicans “rapists” when he first announced his candidacy.

The offensive remarks were premeditated, Trump suggested under oath in a sworn video deposition taken June 16.

The deposition was part of a lawsuit Trump launched against a restaurateur who pulled out of a deal to open a restaurant in the billionaire businessman’s new Washington, D.C. hotel in response to his racism.

The deal fell apart after Trump made his offensive comments on the campaign trail.

It is one of two lawsuits Trump leveled against restaurants who said his nasty remarks were reason enough to end their business relationship.

“They thought I made statements that were inflammatory in some form,” Trump said, complaining of the response he’d received for his incendiary remarks.

Asked if he had planned “in advance” what he was going to say in that now-famous speech launching his campaign, he said “yes.”

“I mean, I’ve tapped into something. I’ve tapped into illegal immigration,” he said a minute later, bragging about his big primary win.

Trump’s team fought the video becoming public, but a judge ruled Friday that the candidate’s argument that it could be used in attack ads against him wasn’t enough reason to keep it sealed.

The GOP candidate said that he did “virtually nothing” to prepare for the sworn deposition, similar today his approach heading into the first presidential debate.

(h/t New York Daily News)

Media

Trump’s “Charity” Gave $10,000 Quack Anti-Vaccination Group

Donald Trump has spent years indulging in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, so it’s little surprise that his shady “charity” foundation donated a chunk of cash to one of the nation’s biggest anti-vaccination campaigns.

The Daily Beast reports that in 2010, the Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue, a nonprofit group whose primary goal is to promote false links between vaccinations and autism.

“McCarthy’s charity promotes ‘alternative vaccination physicians’ and has a grant program to provide families with autistic children with vitamins, minerals, and supplements; urine testing; and ‘dietary intervention training,’” The Daily Beast notes.

None of the claims that Generation Rescue makes about vaccinations have any basis in scientific reality, and its “alternative” methods for disease prevention have not proven effective.

(h/t Raw Story)

Reality

A little back story… way back in 1998 there was a Doctor called Andrew Wakefield who published a study in the well-respected medical journal The Lancet that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Funny thing about well-respected scientific journals is, people in your field of study read your paper and try to duplicate the results, this is called peer-review. Nobody could duplicate the results so people became suspicious. Looking harder they found a sub-standard sample size of only 13 subjects, many subjects who already showed signs of autism at the start of the study, discovered data that was fraudulently modified, uncovered plans by Wakefield exploit the new market he created by profiting from his findings, and a discovered conflict of interest. Every single study that has been performed in regards to vaccines and autism continues to find no link between the two. In short Doctor Wakefield is now Mr. Wakefield and can never study medicine again and vaccines remain one of the greatest discoveries of human history.

Just like Mr. Trump, you probably have one friend, who is not a doctor or scientist, who has some story that might shed doubt in your mind that vaccines do cause autism. Think about this; That is just one story versus the vast body of evidence in well-performed scientific studies over decades of time, all publicly available to read, and all show absolutely no link. Know anyone with polio? Know anyone who died from smallpox? I’ll bet good money the answer is no. Thank you vaccines. And thank you evidence-based science.

There should be zero surprise that year after year we experience outbreaks of vaccine preventable disease in the areas that have the lowest vaccination rates where many adults and children die. We’re not at all implying that Donald Trump or Jenny McCarthy is responsible for these deaths. What we are saying is that when you are a leader and you go around promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, what you are doing is reinforcing someone’s deeply held beliefs and this makes it all the more harder for them to accept new factual information. It is very irresponsible and dangerous on the part of Donald Trump to propagate these false claims.

Trump Tweets Americans Should Watch Miss Amercia’s Sex Tape

Twitter

Update: In the title we referred to Alicia Machado as “Miss America,” she was Miss Universe.

Donald Trump has doubled down on his attacks on a former Miss Universe in a stream of early-morning tweets.

Trump’s verbal barbs directed at Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe title in 1996, started after the first presidential debate Monday when Hillary Clinton mentioned her and claimed that Trump used to call her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”

Rather than back away from the accusations, Trump has repeatedly defended his criticisms of the woman and her weight.

His latest came online this morning:

(h/t ABC News)

Reality

Researchers have looked and the so-called “sex tape” came from a reality television show called La Granja, which is nothing more than some grainy, night-vision footage of a couple of covered figures writhing in a bed, hardly qualifies as explicit. And reality television being what it is, the scene the tape depicts was quite possibly staged or fabricated.

Alicia Machado did pose topless for Playboy magazine, though.

However if Machado has a sex tape or not, this does not matter. The argument put forth at the first presidential debate was; Does Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump engage in bullying and sexism and are this qualities you would want in your President?  And by Trump attempting deflect charges of sexism and bullying by turning around and engaging in sexist attacks against a woman’s weight and acting like the textbook definition of a bully over several days does not help his defense.

Lawsuit Alleges Trump Wanted to Replace Unattractive Female Employees

Donald Trump wanted to fire female employees he considered unattractive and replace them with better-looking women at a golf resort he owned, according to court documents from a 2012 lawsuit.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the court documents detail a lawsuit that alleges Trump pressured employees at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos to replace those he viewed to be unattractive female employees over a number of years in the 2000s.

The report comes as Trump has faced renewed criticism that he disrespects women, a narrative fueled by his controversial remarks about a former Miss Universe that he worked with when he owned the beauty pageant. Hillary Clinton raised in Monday’s debate the fact that he called Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” after she won his 1996 Miss Universe pageant.

Hayley Strozier, an employee at the golf club until 2008, alleged in a sworn declaration she “had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women.”

According to the LA Times report, the employees said in their lawsuit that they rotated employees schedules “so that the most attractive women were scheduled to work when Mr. Trump was scheduled to be at the club.”

The Trump Organization called the allegations “meritless.”

“We do not engage in discrimination of any kind,” said Jill Martin, vice president and assistant general counsel for The Trump Organization. “The statements made by a group of former disgruntled employees are far from an accurate portrayal of what it is like to work at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles. Mr. Trump’s sole focus is on ensuring that the facility and operation are providing the highest level of service and an unparalleled golf experience. The only appearance Mr. Trump cares about is that of the facility and the grounds. Rather than looking to old statements from a handful of employees with an ax to grind, the media should focus on the thousands of happy employees, of all races, gender, size and shape, whose lives upon which Mr. Trump has made an incredibly positive impact.”

In the lawsuit, employees claim that Trump’s stated preferences regarding female employees caused managers to value appearance over skill when making hiring and staffing decisions. They also allege that Trump himself made inappropriate and unprofessional comments toward female employees.

The LA Times described the case as a “broad labor relations lawsuit” that is “focused on the course’s high-pressure work culture” in addition to spotlighting the revelations about Trump’s treatment of female employees.

According to the Times’ report, “the bulk of the lawsuit was settled in 2013” with a $475,000 payment to plaintiff employees without any admission of wrongdoing. Another female employee who said she was fired for complaining about the treatment of women at the golf club agreed to a separate settlement with confidential terms.

(h/t CNN)

Trump Foundation Lacks Certification To Operate As Charity

The Trump Foundation, which is under investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office, never obtained the necessary certification to solicit money from the public during its nearly 30-year existence, an investigation by the state’s attorney general’s office has found, a source briefed on the investigation tells ABC News.

New York State law requires any charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year from the public to obtain a specific kind of certification.

The allegation about the Donald J. Trump Foundation’s lack of certification, first reported by the Washington Post, comes about two weeks after New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman — a Hillary Clinton supporter — announced he had opened a broad inquiry into the foundation.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the AG’s office declined comment.

In a statement released when the inquiry was announced earlier this month, Trump campaign Jason Miller blasted Schneiderman.

“Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is a partisan hack who has turned a blind eye to the Clinton Foundation for years and has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President,” he said. This is nothing more than another left-wing hit job designed to distract from Crooked Hillary Clinton’s disastrous week.”

Tax forms for the foundation list Trump as its president and Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization, as the treasurer. As of 2006, Trump’s three eldest children -— Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump —- have been listed as directors of the charity.

The broad inquiry into the foundation focused on a $25,000 donation the organization gave to a group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. The donation drew scrutiny because Bondi’s office declined to join a lawsuit against Trump’s now-shuttered Trump University.

Both Trump and Bondi have denied the allegations or any impropriety. But Trump did pay a $2,500 fine to the IRS because charities are not allowed to give to political causes. Trump also reimbursed the foundation $25,000

As ABC News previously reported, the foundation’s financial forms for 2001 through 2014 are currently available.

The biggest contributor from 2011 to 2014 was Richard Ebers, a man associated with an event-ticketing company, Inside Sports and Entertainment, according to the 990 forms.

Ebers donated more than $1.8 million to the foundation from 2011 to 2014, and he was the largest contributor each of those years.

(h/t ABC News)

Trump Broke Cuban Embargo, Report Says

Donald Trump’s hotel and casino company secretly spent money trying to do business in Cuba in violation of the U.S. trade embargo, Newsweek reported Thursday in a story that could endanger the Republican presidential nominee’s Cuban-American support in South Florida.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts paid at least $68,000 to a consulting firm in late 1998 in an attempt to give Trump’s business a head start in Cuba if the U.S. loosened or lifted trade sanctions, according to the front-page Newsweek report, titled “The Castro Connection.” The consulting firm, Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corp., later instructed the casino company on how to make it look like legal spending for charity.

The following year, Trump flirted with a Reform Party presidential run, giving a November 1999 speech to the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami where he cast himself as a pro-embargo hardliner who refused to do potentially lucrative business on the communist island until Fidel Castro was gone.

Neither Trump nor Richard Fields, the head of Seven Arrows consulting, responded to Newsweek’s requests for comment. Trump later sued Fields, and former Trump adviser Roger Stone suggested to Politico Florida that Fields might have acted on his own, without Trump’s approval, in exploring doing business in Cuba. Newsweek cited an anonymous former Trump executive who claimed “Trump had participated in discussions about the Cuba trip and knew it had taken place.” Trump hired the same consulting firm to try to develop a Florida casino with the Seminole Tribe.

When Seven Arrows billed Trump’s company to reimburse its Cuba work, according to Newsweek, it suggested using “Carinas Cuba” as charitable cover to get an after-the-fact Cuba license from the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control. OFAC doesn’t issue licenses after companies have already gone to Cuba, and the Catholic charity is actually named Caritas Cuba.

The report comes as Trump has worked to shore up Hispanic support in Miami-Dade County, where Cuban Americans comprise about 72 percent of registered Republicans. He met with a group of mostly Cuban Americans Tuesday in Little Havana, and earlier this month in Miami he blasted President Barack Obama’s reengagement policy with the island, after sounding OK with it last year.

Trump’s most prominent local Cuban-American supporter, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, called the Newsweek report “troubling.”

“The article makes some very serious and troubling allegations,” he said in a campaign statement. “I will reserve judgment until we know all the facts and Donald has been given the opportunity to respond.”

Recent polls show Trump tied in Florida with Hillary Clinton. While Cuban Americans lean heavily Republican, a Florida International University poll showed Miami-Dade Cubans only narrowly backed Trump over Clinton. The Democratic nominee favors lifting the trade embargo, a position the same poll shows is favored by a majority of local Cuban Americans.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported in July that Trump Organization executives traveled to Havana in late 2012 or early 2013 to scout potential business sites and investments.

Nelson Diaz, the Cuban-American chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, questioned whether Trump would have really had a hand in the 1998 Cuba business exploration.

“I don’t know what the true story is,” he said. “If it’s true and evidence comes out that Trump himself personally sanctioned a violation of U.S. law, yes, that’s a problem, but the chance of that sort of evidence coming out — I don’t know.” There’s better evidence, he added, that Clinton tried to hide her emails as secretary of state from the public.

The Newsweek story got immediate morning drive-time play on Miami’s Spanish-language radio station.

“Everybody’s done business in Cuba,” one WAQI-AM 710 Radio Mambí listener said, sounding defensive about Trump.

“Yes,” host Bernadette Pardo said, “but here it’s illegal.”

Trump Peddles Google Conspiracy Theory

Donald Trump on Wednesday touted a long-debunked conspiracy theory that the most popular internet search engine suppresses negative headlines about his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Trump didn’t cite a source to back up his claim, but the most recent report alleging this came from Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned news agency.

“Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton,” Trump said, apparently referring to Google searches during the first presidential debate on Monday night.

Trump’s remarks Wednesday night came two weeks after Sputnik News, a Russian government-controlled news agency, published a report claiming that Google search results are biased in Clinton’s favor. Conservative news outlets, including Breitbart News, whose chairman became Trump’s campaign CEO last month, linked to the report.

Trump has been repeatedly criticized for being too praiseworthy of Russian President Vladimir Putin and for promoting foreign policies that would benefit Russian interests around the world. And several of his top advisers — most notably his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort — have extensive ties to Russian government officials and oligarchs.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment asking where Trump sourced his claim.

But the remark was not an off-the-cuff ad lib — it was included in the prepared remarks Trump read from during his rally speech Wednesday night.

The conspiracy theory first popped up in a viral video dating back to June, in which the pop culture site SourceFed claimed Google actively altered search recommendations to benefit Clinton’s campaign, which search engine optimization experts quickly debunked.

Despite what you might have seen online, Google is not manipulating its search results to favor Hillary Clinton.

Google also rebuked the claim in a statement last June.

“Our autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name,” a Google spokeswoman said. “Google autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how autocomplete works.”

(h/t CNN)

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