Trump Drops ‘Birther’ Theory, but Floats a New False One: Clinton Started It

Donald Trump finally admitted Friday that “President Barack Obama was born in the United States,” reversing himself on the issue that propelled him into national politics five years ago.

Trump sought to end his longstanding attempt to discredit the nation’s first African-American president with just a few sentences tacked on at the end as he unveiled his new hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

But the issue isn’t likely to die down any time soon — especially as Trump continues to falsely blame Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for starting the “birtherism” controversy. Clinton said earlier Friday that Trump’s acknowledgment of Obama’s birthplace doesn’t go far enough and that he must also apologize.

“For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said at an event in Washington. “His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie.”

Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

Trump offered no apologies for his leading role in the birther movement and didn’t explain what drove him to change his mind. The President dismissed Trump’s criticism Friday, joking with reporters at the White House and saying, “I was pretty confident about where I was born.”

Speaking at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the controversy head on.

“There were those who questioned and continue to question for the past eight years up through this very day whether my husband was even born in this country,” she said. “Well, during his time in office, I think Barack has answered those questions with the example he set by going high when they low.”

Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, called Trump a “disgusting fraud.”

Birtherism controversy

The birtherism controversy exploded the previous night when Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post that he still wasn’t prepared to acknowledge Obama’s birthplace. Within a few hours, the campaign released a statement — attributed to his spokesman — that said Trump now believes Obama was born in the United States.

Trump finally said the words out loud Friday morning.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period,” Trump said, ignoring reporters’ questions despite earlier indications he would hold a press conference. “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”

The developments over the past day were steeped in political motivations. With 53 days before the presidential election, Trump is moving into a margin of error race with Clinton and trying to broaden his appeal while maintaining his grip on the GOP base. Trump has tried to improve his dismal standing among minority voters and moderate Republicans in recent weeks, many of whom see birtherism as racially motivated and an insult to Obama.

He is also aiming to take the issue of Obama’s birthplace and legitimacy off the table by the time of the crucial debate with Clinton September 26.

Trump has declined other opportunities during the past two weeks to refute his original birtherism.

When local Philadelphia TV station WPVI asked Trump on September 2 about his past statements, Trump replied: “I don’t talk about it anymore. I told you, I don’t talk about it anymore.”

He repeated the same line when asked about it during a gaggle with reporters aboard his plane last week.

And in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly last week, Trump again said, “I don’t bother talking about it.”

Trump’s extraordinary attempt to prove Obama was not a natural-born US citizen and was therefore not qualified to be president started on the conservative fringe but gathered momentum and became a major issue. The White House initially tried to ignore the birtherism movement as the work of conspiracy theorists, but Trump’s huge media profile propelled the issue through conservative media and it eventually gained traction.

The saga only ended in a surreal and extraordinary moment in American politics when the sitting President went to the White House briefing room in April 2011 and produced his long-form birth certificate.

‘Sideshows and carnival barkers’

“We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Obama said at the time, in a clear reference to Trump.

In his statement Thursday night, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, “Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised.”

He was referring to a controversy from the 2008 Democratic primary fight between Obama and Clinton. In a March 2008 interview with “60 Minutes,” Clinton said she took then-Sen. Obama’s word that he was not a Muslim, but when pressed if she believed he was, she replied, “No. No, there is nothing to base that on — as far as I know.”

Clinton, however, was not questioning Obama’s birthplace.

Clinton slammed Trump’s comments to the Post while speaking at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute event in Washington Thursday, saying he needs to stop his “ugliness” and “bigotry.”

“He was asked one more time: Where was President Obama born? And he still wouldn’t say Hawaii. He still wouldn’t say America. This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?” she said. “This is the best he can do. This is who he is. And so we need to decide who we are.”

Clinton’s campaign later tweeted, “President Obama’s successor cannot and will not be the man who led the racist birther movement. Period.”

The ‘birther’ controversy

Trump’s embrace of the birther controversy seemed outlandish when it began. In retrospect, it looks like a template for the fact-challenged approach he has adopted in his presidential campaign.

After Obama’s news conference, the real-estate developer claimed credit for getting the President to produce evidence of his birthplace.

“Today I’m very proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else was able to accomplish,” Trump said in New Hampshire, after Obama’s news conference.

In subsequent years, Obama poked fun at the birtherism controversy and used it to ridicule Trump, most memorably in a savage takedown at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in 2011.

“Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald,” Obama said.

“And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

The first idea that Barack Obama was not a naturally born citizen can actually be traced back to 2004 with the loony racist ravings of Judah Benjamin and Andy Martin. But the origins of the birther conspiracy theory for the 2008 presidential cycle did indeed start with supporters of Hillary Clinton, but there is no evidence that it came from Clinton directly. Most of the noise from the idiot birther conspiracy theorists came after Jun 13, 2008, days after Clinton ended her campaign on June 7, 2008.

While it is true there was some hand from Clinton supporters who were not associated with her campaign, the idea that she started it or was “all in” as Trump previously claimed, is pure fiction.

Trump’s Son: Tax Returns ‘Detract’ from Political Message

Donald Trump’s son has a new reason to explain why his father won’t release his tax returns: They’ll steal from his political message.

“Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from (his father’s) main message,” Donald Trump, Jr. told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in a piece published Wednesday.

That’s a dramatic shift from the Republican nominee’s longtime explanation that an ongoing audit is preventing him from releasing his tax returns. (There are no laws barring Trump from disclosing his tax returns while he is being audited).

The comment reflects the political potency of Trump’s tax returns. There are growing questions about what’s in the documents, including details of investments in foreign countries. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, said Thursday that presidential candidates should release their tax returns.

“I released mine,” Ryan said. “I think we should release our returns. I’ll leave it to him when to do it.”

Former Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, sought to connect Trump Jr.’s comments with the campaign’s longtime audit explanation. In a Thursday interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room,” Kingston said releasing the tax returns could influence the IRS audit process.

“If you put it on the table, you’re going to have 300 million Americans second-guessing what is this, what is that?” Kingston said. “That actually, I think, would influence the IRS because they would say, ‘Oh, wait, somebody out in Idaho said this. Somebody in Chicago said that. Somebody in New York said this.’ Then they’re off chasing things.”

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday that putting out the returns would lead to misinterpretations.

“With a $10 billion business, if Donald Trump dumped his taxes out today, there would be all kinds of misinterpretations of that and maybe some real interpretations of that between now and November. That would be the only discussion we’d have,” King, a Trump supporter, said on “New Day.” “So I’d say the window is closed on that but I wish he had done so last March or April.”

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has released nearly four decades of tax returns.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump had a contradictory position 4 years ago when he demanded Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.

As for the “audit” excuse, the fact remains that this rationale has never made any sense: an IRS audit doesn’t preclude someone from sharing their returns.

Since Watergate, every presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has released his or her tax returns. It’s not required by law, but there’s a tradition of disclosure that Americans have come to count on during the presidential vetting process: candidates for the nation’s highest office are expected to release information related to their personal health and their tax filings.

Indeed even Richard Nixon, during his presidency, released his tax materials in the midst of an IRS audit. Trump could, if he wanted to, release these returns whenever he feels like it. For reasons he won’t explain, the GOP candidate just doesn’t want to.

It’s as if the campaign has decided to wave a big, unmistakable sign that reads, “We have something to hide.”

Trump Claims Clinton Coined Term ‘Alt-Right’, This is Not True

Trump and alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog kissing.

In an interview on Trump’s plane in Canton, Ohio, Trump tried to blame Clinton and her allies for creating the term “alt-right,” although the term has been used within the movement for years.

Clinton and her campaign argue that some Trump backers are racist and misogynistic and have sought to link him to the “alt-right” movement of self-avowed white nationalists, many of whom have rallied around his candidacy.

“The alt-right. You know they came up with the term ‘alt-right.’  I think the term itself is ridiculous. The alt-right. When did it come into existence? It was just made up.”

Later in the interview Trump said he was unconcerned that moderators during the upcoming debates may decide to fact-check during the forums.

“I don’t care. My facts are good. My facts are good. I don’t get enough credit for having my facts right,” Trump said. “They’ll say I’m wrong even when I’m right.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

Trump rarely gets his facts right. We have over 150 instances of Trump not getting his facts right and we’re positive we missed quite a few.

The term “alt-right”, or Alternative Right, was not created by Hillary Clinton but was coined in 2008 by Richard Bertrand Spencer, who heads the white nationalist think tank known as the National Policy Institute, to describe a loose set of far-right ideals centered on “white identity” and the preservation of “Western civilization.

The alt-right movement is associated with white nationalism, white supremacism, antisemitism, right-wing populism, nativism, and the neoreactionary movement and wholeheartedly embrace the overt racism, misogyny, neo-Nazi affectations, bullying and trolling of chan culture as a lifestyle

Donald Trump famously hired alt-right leader and former Breitbart editor as his campaign CEO, signaling his embrace of the movement and pushing hate and racism into the mainstream.

Trump Defiant, Won’t Say Obama Was Born in United States

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in an interview in Canton, Ohio that he remains unwilling to say that President Obama is born in the United States, that he is more bullish than ever on his chances to win and that he is not exploring the launch of a new media company in case he loses the race.

Trump also made a far-from-subtle push — in the interview and in a letter from his doctor released Thursday — to be seen as vigorous and healthy as his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, returned to the campaign trail after being treated for mild pneumonia.

In the interview, conducted late Wednesday aboard his private plane as it idled on the tarmac here, Trump suggested he is not eager to change his pitch or his positions even as he works to reach out to minority voters, many of whom are deeply offended by his long-refuted suggestion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Trump refused to say whether he believes Obama was born in Hawaii.

“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

When asked whether his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was accurate when she said recently that he now believes Obama was born in this country, Trump responded: “It’s okay. She’s allowed to speak what she thinks. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on other things.”

He added: “I don’t talk about it anymore. The reason I don’t is because then everyone is going to be talking about it as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security.”

In the interview, Trump defended his wife’s immigration history; attacked targets including CNN host Anderson Cooper and Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.); and said he had been “respectful” since Clinton fell ill but “that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stay there.”

Sitting in his plush, cream-and-gold cabin as his top aides looked on, Trump began by repeatedly recounting his poll numbers, which have ticked up nationally and in some key states.

Trump said a possible turning point in the race came last week when Clinton said that “half” of his supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables” — a remark she has since said she regrets.

“It’s the single biggest mistake in this political cycle, a massive comment, bigger than 47 percent,” Trump said, a reference to Mitt Romney’s controversial 2012 statement at a fundraiser about voters who receive government benefits or pay little in taxes. “When I first heard it, I couldn’t believe that she said it.”

Clinton and her campaign argue that some Trump backers are racist and misogynistic and have sought to link him to the “alt-right” movement of self-avowed white nationalists, many of whom have rallied around his candidacy.

Trump was a leading and vocal proponent of the debunked conspiracy theory that the nation’s first black president was born overseas and thus not eligible for the White House. Obama released his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate in 2011, but Trump has never disavowed his earlier claims.

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

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

The first idea that Barack Obama was not a naturally born citizen can actually be traced back to 2004 with the loony racist ravings of Judah Benjamin and Andy Martin. But the origins of the birther conspiracy theory for the 2008 presidential cycle did indeed start with supporters of Hillary Clinton, but there is no evidence that it came from Clinton directly. Most of the noise from the idiot birther conspiracy theorists came after Jun 13, 2008, days after Clinton ended her campaign on June 7, 2008.

While it is true there was some hand from Clinton supporters, the idea that she started it or was “all in” as Trump claimed, is pure fiction.

Donald Trump Jr. Casually Makes A Holocaust Joke

Donald Trump’s son, a primary surrogate for his presidential candidacy, alluded on Thursday to the mass killing of Jewish people in Nazi Germany while laying out what he sees as a media double standard in campaign coverage.

In an interview with Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, Donald Trump Jr. made the argument that Republicans would be punished if they lied or schemed in fashions similar to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And then he decided to talk about gas chambers.

“The media has been her number one surrogate in this. Without the media, this wouldn’t even be a contest, but the media has built her up,” Trump Jr said. “They’ve let her slide on every indiscrepancy (sic), on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”

A reference to gas chambers is the type of remark that under typical campaign conventions would be met with profound rebuke and alarm. But while criticism came in quickly on Twitter, a senior member of the Republican National Committee still blasted out the interview.

Trump Jr. has gone down similar paths before. As the group RightWingWatch noted, he has “posted an image to Instagram that included “Pepe the frog,” which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a meme “constantly used by white supremacists” and “appeared on a radio show with James Edwards, host of the white supremacist radio show Political Cesspool.”

The Trump campaign has also been accused in the past of pushing anti-Semitic memes. Donald Trump himself got into trouble over the summer for tweeting an image of Clinton pasted over money with a Jewish star badge next to her.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Update

Trump Jr. told NBC News that he was referring to corporal punishment, not the Holocaust. The reaction from some anti-Semitic Trump supporters on Twitter, however, suggests that they comfortably took it as a Holocaust reference.

Media

Trump Ditches, Then Mocks His Press Corps

Donald Trump on Thursday mocked his traveling press corps for being late to his rally, even though his campaign is responsible for arranging the pool’s travel.

“I have really good news for you,” the Republican nominee told supporters here, according to a livestream of the rally this and other pool reporters watched on a bus from the airport to the event location.

“I just heard the press is stuck on their airplane. They can’t get here. I love it. So they’re trying to get here now. They’re going to be about 30 minutes late. They called us and said could you wait? I said absolutely not. Let’s get going, New Hampshire.”

While television cameras continued to roll live on the rally, still photographers already at the venue opted not to shoot any images of the event out of solidarity with their pool colleagues.

“This is completely ridiculous and unacceptable. This has gone on for way to long and it’s time we take a stand,” said one member of the traveling press.

“The press corps is at a boiling point here and was more frustrated tonight than ever,” said another.

“There’s the want to do something among traveling press of course – being constantly mocked and demonized is awful – but there’s the competing feeling that news organizations have almost let too much slide to have any bargaining power at this point,” said a third member of Trump’s traveling press corps.

The reporters said they had yet to receive an explanation or response as to why they were left behind. Spokespeople for the campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

Some members of the traveling press considered not covering the event in an attempt to boycott, but their efforts were unsuccessful as management from various networks pushed back. Plus, the event was being carried live by the network pool, meaning Trump’s image was still being broadcast on television.

Trump, who blacklisted individual reporters and several news organizations (including POLITICO) until last Thursday, has made a habit of using the media as a punching bag while still largely enjoying saturation campaign coverage from television networks.

Trump has also criticized Hillary Clinton for avoiding the press. After going more than 260 days without holding a news conference, the Democratic nominee has repeatedly taken questions from the press in the past week, including in Greensboro, North Carolina, Thursday afternoon.

Clinton also began traveling on the same plane as her press pool two weeks ago, while Trump still travels without his.

Trump is the first candidate to go so long into a campaign season without traveling with his press corps. Neither campaign has the full-on protective pool that is with the candidate from the moment they leave their home or hotel until they return, but Clinton has a quasi-protective pool, meaning she does travel with the media on the same plane. Trump’s press pool travels separately.

Members of the media pay extra to travel on the campaign-arranged press planes and buses, with the distinct purpose of making sure they arrive on time and with the candidate to events, versus arranging their own travel. But this is far from the first time Trump left his press pool behind. In late August, when Trump traveled to Mexico meet the country’s president, he left his pool behind in Arizona. Earlier that same month, when Trump went to Baton Rouge to survey flood damage, the traveling press were also not invited. Trump said that the trip would be “non-political” with no press, but the visit was still featured prominently by all of the major outlets.

Trump took off from LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, shortly after taping an appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” late Thursday afternoon.

His press plane did not leave a different airport in Teterboro, New Jersey, until after 7:30 p.m. because some reporters who pooled Trump’s appearance on “Tonight Show” were caught in traffic leaving Manhattan.

Based on the final three minutes of Trump’s remarks, all the press pool was able to hear in person, it sounded like the GOP nominee stuck to the same scripted stump speech he’s been delivering over the past week.

(h/t Politico)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YykQ5NEs3fU

Trump Wants to Roll Back Food Safety Regulations

Donald Trump floated rolling back food safety regulations if he wins the White House in November.

In a fact sheet posted online Thursday, the campaign highlighted a number of “specific regulations to be eliminated” under the GOP nominee’s economic plan, including what they called the “FDA Food Police.”

“The FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food,” it read.“The rules govern the soil farmers use, farm and food production hygiene, food packaging, food temperatures and even what animals may roam which fields and when,” the statement continued. “It also greatly increased inspections of food ‘facilities,’ and levies new taxes to pay for this inspection overkill.”

The fact sheet was later removed from the website and a new fact sheet detailing Trump’s economic agenda did not include mention of the FDA.

The FDA recently completed an overhaul of the food safety system with seven rules to better protect consumers from food-borne illnesses. Manufacturers of both animal and human food are now required to implement preventive controls to minimize the risk of contaminating food when it’s manufactured, processed, packed or held by a facility.

Trump’s economic policy plan also calls for “an immediate halt to new federal regulations and a very thorough agency-level review of previous regulations to see which need to be scrapped.”

Agencies would be required to list all regulations and rank them in terms of their contribution to growth, health and safety. The ultimate goal, Trump said, would be to strengthen the rules that are useful and reduce the rules that harm the economy.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Republicans can complain about regulations all they want, FDA food regulations on hygiene are part of the reason why when eating food you don’t think twice about if it will kill you.

Who cares what report they manipulate to show regulations kill jobs (overall they don’t) when we are talking about public safety.

Probably the most recent famous incident involving sub-standard sanitary conditions resulting in a public health crisis was the listeriosis outbreak caused by Blue Bell ice cream in 2015 that caused 5 deaths.

These protections are what Trump wants to repeal. This isn’t funny.

Trump Goes After African-American Pastor Who Shut Him Down for Politicking

Donald Trump on Thursday slammed the pastor who interrupted him onstage during Wednesday remarks at a Michigan church.

In a telephone interview with “Fox and Friends,” the Republican presidential nominee accused the pastor of the church in Flint, Michigan, of planning to come onstage to cut off his remarks when he addressed her congregation on Wednesday.

“When she got up to introduce me she was so nervous, she was shaking,” Trump said. “And I said, ‘Wow this is sort of strange.’ And then she came up. So she had that in mind. There was no question about it.”

He added: “She was so nervous. She was like a nervous mess. And so I figured something was up. Really.”

Several minutes into Trump’s remarks at Bethel United Methodist Church on Wednesday, Rev. Faith Green-Timmons reminded the real-estate mogul that the event was intended to focus on the water-crisis recovery in Flint, where state cost-cutting measures resulted in lead contamination in the city’s water supply.

“Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for what we’ve done for Flint, not to give a political speech,” Green-Timmons said.

“Oh, OK, OK, OK, that’s good,” Trump said. “Then I’m going to go back on to Flint.”

Trump then told Fox and Friends, “The audience was saying, ‘Let him speak, let him speak!’ ”

That isn’t true. In fact, several audience members began to heckle Trump, asking pointed questions about whether he racially discriminated against black tenants as a landlord. (Which he did several times, even after being caught and punished.)

(h/t Business Insider)

Reality

How is Trump’s much-hyped outreach to African-Americans going again?

Media

Trump Overseas Business Conflicts ‘Can’t be Unwound’

The author of a new report that alleges Donald Trump’s businesses overseas have conflicts with America’s interests said Wednesday that the Republican presidential nominee “makes money by aiding the people whose interests don’t coincide with America’s.”

“The interests of these businesses, the interests of these politicians, often go directly against the interests of American national security. So right now you have Donald Trump in a situation where he makes money by aiding the people whose interests don’t coincide with America’s,” Newsweek senior writer Kurt Eichenwald told CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota on “New Day,” adding later, “The important thing here is this is an entanglement that can’t be unwound.”

The Newsweek report raised a series of questions about how Trump would handle the countless conflicts of interests inherent in his overseas business interests.

Trump has said he plans to entrust his business to his children if he is elected president, a move that would only partially distance Trump from his massive corporation and do little to quell questions about influence-peddling and conflicts of interest.

“From what I’m hearing, Trump is planning to say that he will put the company in a blind trust — which is sort of like saying ‘I have 100 million shares of Apple stock and I’m going to put it in a blind trust,'” Eichenwald said. “He would know what’s there, he knows who his partners are and he knows, you know, he will know going forward.”

“Now, in the future, you’re talking about giving money to either the family of the President of the United States or money that will go to the President of the United States if his company is in this, you know, blind trust.”

CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the report and has not yet received a response.

Ivanka Trump also discussed the future of the Trump business empire if her father wins the presidency during an interview on “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday. Asked what the family would do to prevent potential conflicts of interest, she said that “as a private business, we can make decisions that are not in our best interest.”

“There’s something so much bigger than our business at stake, and that’s the future of this country,” she said. “We can say, you know what, we’ll do less deals, and not going to do that deal even though it’s a fine deal and economically reasonable because it could create a conflict of interest. And we’ll act incredibly responsibly, and my father already said he would put it into a blind trust and it would be run by us.”

The report outlines a series of potential conflicts of interests, from Trump’s dealings with businessmen who have been the subject of government investigations in India and Turkey to his ties to powerful Russian oligarchs.

On “New Day,” Eichenwald explained why Turkey would be problematic for the Republican nominee. He said that a failed business deal between Trump and a politically-connected organzation in the country had created potential tension between Trump and the President Recep Erdogan, who had called the deal a “mistake.”

“What I am being told is that Turkey’s cooperation with the United States, in terms of providing an air base where we are able to launch bombers against ISIS would be at risk if Donald Trump was president,” he said.

And where Trump has suggested significant changes to US foreign policy, the Newsweek report magnified some of Trump’s business dealings.

Trump, who has floated the idea of Japan and South Korea obtaining nuclear weapons, maintains an ongoing business relationship with Daewoo Engineering and Construction, according to Newsweek. Daewoo is one of the top South Korean companies involved in nuclear energy projects.

In India, Newsweek raised questions about Trump’s ties to powerful businessmen and political parties in the country, particularly in light of promises from Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., to build “a very aggressive pipeline” there with “exciting new projects” to come.

“If he plays tough with India, will the government assume it has to clear the way for projects in that ‘aggressive pipeline’ and kill the investigations involving Trump’s (Indian business) partners? And if Trump takes a hard line with Pakistan, will it be for America’s strategic interests or to appease Indian government officials who might jeopardize his profits from Trump Towers Pune?” Eichenwald wrote.

Eichenwald also discussed potentially problematic connections between Trump and Russian oligarchs under the political umbrella of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One such connection comes from a deal in which the GOP nominee attempted to license the Trump name to an organization in Russia. Eichenwald said that “the head of that organization, who, again, very politically connected, very tied in to the Putin government, backed away from the deal because Trump wanted too much money.”

Trump would undoubtedly have the most expansive and complex international business portfolio of any president in US history, which would bring an added layer of scrutiny to nearly every foreign policy decision Trump would make as president.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign sought to jump on the story Wednesday by tweeting 20 questions that they would like Trump to answer about Eichenwald’s report.

“Will you sever ties with your company linked to foreign leaders, questionable organizations, and criminals if you become president,” read the first.

The questions also hit Trump for not releasing his tax returns, his business connections and his ability to separate his responsibilities as president with his businesses ventures.

“How can we be sure you’d be willing to be tough on any nation if necessary, if it would put your interests and profits at risk?” asked another question.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

A close examination by Newsweek of the Trump Organization revealed a web of contractual entanglements that could not be just canceled. If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires.

In short, because Donald J. Trump would hand over the control of his company that rakes in millions to his children, even with a blind trust as he promised, any policy decision that he would make he would already be aware of any negative or positive impact on his children and their company.

Some of his children are even acting as advisors to his campaign and have helped to write policy proposals, which as they mentioned during the RNC, they plan on continuing in this capacity during Trump’s presidency. This will unquestionably effect their decision-making as the head of a multi-million dollar company, that can skew policy to help their bottom line.

This level of conflict of interest would be undoubtedly seen as a vulnerability by foreign governments who could use the Trump Organization’s interests as leverage in their foreign policies or negotiations with the United States.

Some, but not all, of these concerns could be assuaged if Donald Trump would simply release his tax returns. But to be truly clear of any conflict of interest, as he once suggested of the Clinton Foundation, the Trump Organization should be shut down immediately, contracts canceled, and money returned back to their owners.

It is a long read, but to fully understand the massive scope of this damaging issue, one must read in its entirety.

 

Video Shows Aftermath of 69-Year-Old Woman Punched at a Trump Rally

Dramatic video has emerged of people chasing down a man believed to have punched a 69-year-old woman on oxygen at a Donald Trump rally, showing the escalation of emotions from both protesters and supporters.

Shirley Teeter told a local ABC News affiliate that she attended the event in Asheville, N.C., to protest Trump. She recalls telling supporters outside the rally that they should start learning Russian — alluding to Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then, she said, a man in front of her turned around and punched her in the jaw, knocking her down onto her backpack containing her metal oxygen tank.

“He turned around and just cold-cocked me,” she said.

Police issued a warrant for the man’s arrest on charges of assault.

(h/t LA Times)

Reality

Deplorable

Media

Waring: Not safe for work.

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