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

Donald Trump Even Refuses to Pay His Top Staff

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has run an unusually cheap campaign in part by not paying at least 10 top staffers, consultants and advisers, some of whom are no longer with the campaign, according to a review of federal campaign finance filings.

Those who have so far not been paid, the filings show, include recently departed campaign manager Paul Manafort, California state director Tim Clark, communications director Michael Caputo and a pair of senior aides who left the campaign in June to immediately go to work for a Trump Super PAC.

The New York real estate magnate and his allies have touted his campaign’s frugality, saying it is evidence of his management skills. His campaign’s spending has totaled $89.5 million so far, about a third of what Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign has spent.

But not compensating top people in a presidential campaign is a departure from campaign finance norms. Many of the positions involved might typically come with six-figure annual paychecks in other campaigns.

“It’s unprecedented for a presidential campaign to rely so heavily on volunteers for top management positions,” said Paul Ryan, an election lawyer with the campaign finance reform advocacy group Campaign Legal Center.

The Trump campaign said the Reuters’ reporting was “sloppy at best” but declined to elaborate.

One of the 10 who were unpaid, Michael Caputo, told a Buffalo radio station in June after he resigned from the campaign, that he was not volunteering. Rather, he said he just had not gotten paid. Caputo confirmed to Reuters on Thursday that the Trump campaign has still not paid his invoices.

In another instance, two high-level former Trump campaign advisers, former Chris Christie campaign manager Ken McKay and Manafort lobbying associate Laurance Gay, departed the Trump campaign in June and went to work for the Trump-backed Super PAC, Rebuilding America Now. In June, the Super PAC paid each of them $60,000, the filings show.

Federal campaign law stipulates that people working for campaigns, who may possess strategic knowledge of a campaign or work as a campaign’s agents, must wait for 120 days before going to work for a Super PAC, a political spending group that can accept unlimited sums of money from wealthy donors so long as it does not coordinate with a campaign.

Through a spokesperson, McKay and Gay said they were volunteering for Trump and did not possess strategic information so the rule did not apply to them.

Another example of free labor is Rick Gates, who was Manafort’s deputy. According to two former high-level Trump staffers, Gates essentially functioned as the Trump campaign manager for more than two months, all while not collecting a paycheck.

By contrast, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook earned roughly $10,000 in July, the same amount as President Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina did in 2012. That same year, Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, was making nearly $7,000 bi-monthly.

Others who, according to the FEC filings, have not been paid include finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, national political director Rick Wiley and senior adviser Barry Bennett, who were not available for comment. Nor were Manafort, Gates and Clark.

Many campaigns have volunteers who work as low-level ground troops, knocking on voters’ doors and passing out campaign buttons. There are instances in other campaigns of senior staff opting not to draw a paycheck. For example, John Podesta, a longtime adviser to Clinton who is now her campaign chairman, considers his role honorary and does not draw a salary.

What is unusual, however, is for a campaign to have such a large group of people in top positions who are unpaid.

After Manafort resigned in August, Trump promoted his senior adviser and top pollster, Kellyanne Conway, to become his new campaign manager.

Before then, Conway ran a Super PAC affiliated with Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. For work from June 2015 to June 2016, the Super PAC paid the firm she owns more than $700,000.

She officially joined the Trump campaign July 1. But so far, according to campaign finance reports that detail spending through July 31, Conway has not been paid by the Trump campaign.

She did not respond to a request for comment.

Reality

Donald Trump has had a long history of refusing payment to the little guys, contractors and employees, now it appears he won’t look out for the big guys either.

Trump Changed Immigration Policy After Mexican Leader’s Wall Tweet

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton once said, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” Today she was proven correct.

As Donald Trump arrived in Phoenix late Wednesday, fresh from a visit to Mexico City’s presidential palace, he had in his hands a big immigration speech that omitted the usual line that Mexico would have to pay for his proposed wall along the U.S. southern border.

Just after landing, though, Mr. Trump discovered that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had tweeted that he had told the Republican presidential nominee during their private meeting earlier that day that his country would refuse to pay for the wall.

Mr. Trump was peeved that Mr. Peña Nieto had gone public with the fact that the Mexican president had broken what Mr. Trump considered a deal to keep the question of paying for the wall off the table at their initial meeting.

So Mr. Trump hurriedly inserted a new sentence in his immigration speech, and he soon boomed out from the podium his traditional declaration that the wall would be paid for by Mexico—adding, “They don’t know it yet but they’re going to pay for the wall.”

“I had no choice,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on Thursday. But he also said of the Mexican president, “I liked him very much.”

(h/t Fox News)

Reality

But yes he did, Trump could have kept the speech as it was written. The apparent lack of choice by the Republican candidate is further proof that he does not have a temperament fit for the office of the President of the United States of America.

Melania Trump Sues Daily Mail and US Blogger for $150m Over Sex Worker Claims

Melania Trump filed a lawsuit against the Daily Mail and a Maryland political blogger on Thursday for publishing “false and tremendously damaging” statements claiming the would-be first lady previously worked as an “escort,” according to court documents and her lawyer.

Trump sued Mail Media, Inc. which publishes the Daily Mail, as well as Webster Griffin Tarpley, who runs the blog Tarpley.net, in a lawsuit filed in the state circuit court of Montgomery County, Maryland.

“These defendants made several statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation,” lawyer Charles Harder said in a statement. “Their many lies include, among others, that Mrs. Trump supposedly was an ‘escort’ in the 1990s before she met her husband.”

Harder famously represented Hulk Hogan in his lawsuit against Gawker Media, which eventually led to the site shutting down.

The lawsuit cites an article on Tarpley.net that alleged that Melania Trump worked as a “high-end escort” and suffered from a “full-blown nervous breakdown” after the Republican convention, as well as an article published on the Daily Mail website referencing similar claims.

The suit says Trump is going after both publications for “in excess of $75,000” but Harder said in his statement that the “Defendants’ actions are so egregious, malicious and harmful to Mrs. Trump that her damages are estimated at $150 million dollars.”

Tarpley removed the blog in question and published an apology and retraction on or about August 22, according to the suit.

But Tarpley also issued a response to the legal filing saying, “Melania Trump’s lawsuit against me is without merit. Mrs. Trump is a public figure actively engaged in the Trump for president campaign. We are confident that Mrs. Trump will not be able to meet her high burden of proving the statements published about her on my website were defamatory in any way. Her lawsuit is a blatant attempt to intimidate not only me but journalists of all stripes into remaining silent with regard to public figures. This lawsuit is a direct affront to First Amendment principles and free speech in our democratic society.”

The Daily Mail also published an extensive retraction online on Thursday, saying the article “did not intend to state or suggest that these allegations are true, nor did it intend to state or suggest that Mrs. Trump ever worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business.'”

“To the contrary, The Daily Mail newspaper article stated that there was no support for the allegations, and it provided adamant denials from Mrs. Trump’s spokesperson and from Mr. Zampolli,” the retraction said.

The Daily Mail’s retraction pointed out that “Among other things, the article noted that allegations have been made in a book available on Amazon about a modeling agency where Mrs. Trump worked in Milan being ‘something like a gentleman’s club,’ and an article published by Suzy, a Slovenian magazine, alleged that Mrs. Trump’s modeling agency in New York … ‘operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients.'”

Trump had previously placed several news organizations on notice of her legal claims, including the Daily Mail, according to statement from Harder on August 23.

(h/t NBC News)

Reality

We do not support false allegations, we do not believe Mrs. Trump was an escort, however we are tracking this as part of our database for yet another instance of the Trump family harassing the press with lawsuits. Please don’t sue us.

Trump Calls Female ‘Morning Joe’ Co-Host Mika Brzezinski ‘Crazy and Very Dumb

Donald Trump on Friday ratcheted up his attacks of the co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” after the show devoted part of its panel discussion to criticizing the Republican nominee on the multitude of flip-flops on “softening” his immigration policy over the past 24 hours.

Trump tweeted, referring to Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough:

“Just heard that crazy and very dumb @morningmika had a mental breakdown while talking about me on the low ratings @Morning_Joe. Joe a mess!”

The Republican nominee has frequently targeted the show on Twitter, threatening last month to “tell the real story” about Scarborough and Brzezinski, who opened the Friday show by noting his comments to radio host Laura Ingraham that there would indeed be “softening” in his immigration plan, despite playing to his base during his hyped Wednesday night speech in Arizona.

Media

Trump surrogate Mark Burns lashes out at media for blackface cartoon fallout

Days after posting a cartoon of Hillary Clinton in blackface to his Twitter account, evangelical pastor and Donald Trump surrogate Mark Burns used another cartoon to blame the media for the backlash he faced.

The cartoon posted Thursday by Burns features a sullen-looking Clinton, her face covered in green makeup with the word “scandal” written on it multiple times. Beside the former secretary of state is a reporter holding a microphone with a “media” mic flag, pointing away from Clinton.

“Look over there!” the reporter says in the cartoon. “A Hillary blackface cartoon!”

In the post accompanying the drawing, Burns wrote, “Isn’t this the TRUTH…! This is what Liberal #MSM do for @HillaryClinton,” using the hashtag abbreviation for mainstream media. He then complimented the cartoonist on his “great drawing.”

On Monday, Burns tweeted out a drawing of Clinton in blackface, wearing a t-shirt that read “No hot sauce no peace!” and holding a sign that said “#@!*✶ the police.” Next to Clinton in the cartoon was text that read “I ain’t no ways tired of pandering to African Americans,” and in the tweet, Burns conveyed what he said was Clinton’s message to African-American voters: “Black Americans, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VOTES and letting me use you again..See you again in 4 years.”

The evangelical pastor, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, later deleted the tweet but then posted another one, again featuring the cartoon, that read “Getting Your Head chopped off by ISIS is more important than a cartoon…Can You Hear Me Now? #STOPTHEPANDERING.”

He also later apologized for the original post, saying it was “not at all my intention to offend anyone.”

Burns posted the blackface cartoon in the midst of Trump’s attempt to do more to reach out to black voters, a group with which he has polled poorly. Before mostly-white audiences, Trump has made the case to African-Americans that they have been failed by Democrats who have left them in dangerous neighborhoods with poor schools and little economic opportunity. Trump has positioned himself as a fresh alternative, often asking black voters “what do you have to lose?” by voting for him.

“The tweet is a frustration that I have as a black man here in America and how I see African-Americans in many cases — not every case but in many cases — are suffering throughout this country and to see how en masse we have been voting for the Democratic Party en masse and yet we have very little to show for it,” Burn said during a phone interview on MSNBC earlier this week, explaining his original blackface tweet. “It’s a vexation to me to see how the Democratic Party, and especially Hillary Clinton, what I call tap dance for the black vote, get it and then disappear for four more years.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Trump and his campaign regularly makes offensive statements then uses the tactic of blaming the media for reporting on them.

Trump Violated Political Donation Rules With Bribe to Florida Attorney General

Donald Trump paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS this year after it was discovered that the mogul’s namesake charity had illegally made a $25,000 political contribution, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation gave the money to a group called “Justice for All,” which was supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s campaign. At the time, Bondi was weighing whether to pursue an investigation into allegations of fraud that had been leveled against Trump University. She eventually declined to bring charges.

The Post had discovered that in their 2013 tax filings, the charity did not list the contribution to the Florida group, but instead showed a $25,000 contribution to a charity in Kansas with a similar name — which it never made.

The Trump foundation also answered no when the form asked if it had made any political contributions that year.

“It was just an honest mistake,” Jeffrey McConney, a senior vice president at the Trump Organization, told the Post. “It wasn’t done intentionally to hide a political donation, it was just an error.”

Trump later reimbursed his foundation for the contribution out of his personal account, which his employees say is more typically used to make such political donations.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

On Sept. 14, 2013, the Sentinel quoted a spokeswoman for Bondi who said that Florida’s attorney general was studying the New York lawsuit to see whether she wanted to take action in Florida as well.

Three days later, on Sept. 17, 2013, Trump’s foundation cut a $25,000 check to a committee associated with Bondi’s campaign. It was one of the largest checks that her “And Justice for All” PAC had received.

Bondi soon dropped her investigation, citing insufficient grounds to proceed.

This was clearly a bribe.

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)

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