Donald Trump on Saturday suggested President Barack Obama would have attended the funeral of Antonin Scalia had the late Supreme Court justice’s service been held in a mosque.
“I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque? Very sad that he did not go.”
I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque? Very sad that he did not go!
Ten veterans from Veterans Challenge Islamophobia unfurled a 10-foot banner during Trump’s speech in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina today. The banner read:
“Mr. Trump: Veterans are not props for hate. We stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers.”
The U.S. veterans who launched the effort have served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam. Many were also decorated for their valor. The veterans, some of whom hail from the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, were forcibly escorted outside after Trump supporters waved signs while chanting Trump’s name. But the group’s actions will not be deterred.
Veterans Challenge Islamophobia plans to take its campaign to other primary states and will fly a similar banner in Las Vegas on Monday evening at Trump’s event there. They say they will continue until Trump and other Republican candidates cease their discriminatory attacks on Muslims.
“Mr. Trump’s hateful rhetoric insults both my Islamic faith and my military service. As a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, I find it shameful that a major presidential candidate would impugn my patriotism, or that of other Muslims, because of our faith,” said Ramon Mejia, who served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq (2001-04).
“As an Army veteran, I deeply resent being used as a prop for intolerance by Mr. Trump. I enlisted in order to serve everyone in my country, including my Muslim sisters and brothers, and to protect constitutional freedoms like religious liberty,” said Maggie Martin, who served three tours in Iraq and Kuwait with the U.S. Army (2001-06).
“As a medic in Afghanistan, I worked closely with Muslim interpreters who risked their lives to support our mission. I’m disgusted when I see candidates like Mr. Trump — who never served in the military — try to demonize Muslims for his own political gain. We need to make it very clear: Islam is not a national security threat,” said Perry O’Brien, who served with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan (2001-04).
During his speech, Donald Trump did not respond directly to the protesters, but did make note of people who challenge him as security folded up the group’s banner.
“We’re going to make the wall 10 feet taller,” Trump said. “And every time they protest, it’s going to go up a little bit higher.”
Donald Trump has made many comments discriminating Muslims. Let’s let Veterans For Peace explain why that is bad:
Bigotry and racism violate all of the values we believed we were defending during our military service. The ideals contained in the Constitution, to the degree they have been manifested in America, have been a beacon to much of the world because of the diversity, openness, and respect for people of all faiths that most Americans live by. It will be a great calamity if we let fear give rise to hatred.
Fear-mongering endangers our national security and gives rise to hatred and racism that play into the hands of an enemy that wants to convince Muslims around the world that the West, led by the U.S., hates them, and that joining ISIL or similar organizations is the only way to truly observe and defend their religion. We can never defend ourselves effectively by playing into our adversary’s strategy, giving credibility to their recruitment propaganda. We endanger ourselves whenever we make that mistake.
During a campaign event at the Sun City retirement community, Donald Trump said that he supports waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques because “torture works” in the questioning of terrorists.
Trump was responding to a question from South Carolina state Rep. Bill Herbkersman (R), who asked the candidate a series of questions in a fireside-chat-style event that lasted 33 minutes.
“On that whole thing of politically correct, would you allow U.S. interrogators to waterboard terrorist prisoners in order to extract information?” Herbkersman asked Trump.
“Absolutely,” Trump said to strong applause from the audience of about 500 retirees, who often laughed as Trump discussed enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump emphasized his intention to reinstate waterboarding and techniques that are “so much worse” and “much stronger.”
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” Trump said. “Okay, folks? Torture — you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”
Torture is illegal, unethical, and simplydoesnotwork. When a subject is in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information provided during the time of torture is useless. It is irresponsible to forget the lessons we learned during the war against terror for Donald Trump to suggest a war crime.
Donald Trump mocked Hillary Clinton on Tuesday for barking like a dog, branding the former secretary of state a ‘joke’, and vowed he would never do so because he said he would be pilloried in the media.
“If I ever did that, I would be ridiculed all over the place. I won’t do it. I’m not going to imitate her,” Trump said during a rally in North Augusta, South Carolina. “She’s barking like a dog, and they’re saying ‘wonderful.'”
Donald Trump rewards a couple of supporters for helping to forcibly remove a protester.
Reality
Comments like these add to the growing evidence that Donald Trump supports and condones violence against people with different ideas.
By giving permission, and now reward, for confrontations by Trump will make only make violence more normal to his supporters and cause a continued escalation. A true president would work towards uniting and diffusing situations.
For the second time in 2016, Donald Trump reposted a message Wednesday night from a Twitter user who goes by the handle @WhiteGenocideTM.
The Republican presidential candidate retweeted and then deleted a post from @WhiteGenocideTM complimenting his crowds, but MSNBC saved a screenshot of the exchange:
Trump was widely criticized after reposting a meme by the same neo-Nazi user in January, which featured a photoshopped image of an apparently homeless Jeb Bush standing outside Trump Tower with a sign reading “Vote Trump.”
The account leaves no doubt about the Twitter user’s white supremacist sympathies. The user’s location is listed as “Jewmerica” and the bio reads “Jewish nationalist/supremacist!” The name: “Donald Trumpovitz.” The account’s feed features dozens of racist memes, posts arguing against miscegenation and pro-Trump messages.
The GOP candidate, who has received vocal support from white nationalist groups, has used retweeting as a way of distancing himself from the extreme views embraced by some of his supporters. After sharing a meme that incorrectly claimed that black Americans commit the majority of murders against white victims, he explained his action to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly by saying, “All it was is a retweet. It wasn’t from me.”
A group of immigration hecklers took on presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign event in New Hampshire.
Trump was taking questions at the historic Exeter Town Hall building in Exeter, where his supporters were packed in like sardines. Also in the mosh pit, it turned out, were a few opponents of the candidates’ position on immigration.
One young woman began asking the Republican candidate for president a question by identifying herself as being from Southern California.
“What are you doing here?” Trump asked. “Are you a liberal Democrat, by any chance?”
After the woman mentioned that immigrants “do the work that nobody else wants to do and for a lot less,” the real estate tycoon asked, “Who told you to be here? Bernie [Sanders]?”
“This is a Bernie plant,” Trump said, referring to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. “This is a Bernie plant.”
Another audience member then yelled out that immigrants living in the country illegally are the “backbone of this country.” In response Trump heckled back:
Illegal immigrants are the backbone of our country? I don’t think so, darling. You know what the backbone of our country is? People that came here, and they came here legally … and they worked their asses off and they made the country great.
Donald Trump on Wednesday morning acknowledged that his campaign may have needed a more robust operation in Iowa, noting that he only recently learned what the term “ground game” means.
Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked if his campaign needed better organization to win in Iowa.
“I think we could’ve used a better ground game, a term I wasn’t even familiar with. You know, when you hear ‘ground game,’ you say, ‘What the hell is that?’ Now I’m familiar with it.”
“I think in retrospect we should’ve had a better ground game, I would’ve funded a better ground game. But people told me my ground game was fine. And I think by most standards it was.”
Trump came in second place in the Iowa caucus, despite polls showing he had a good chance of winning the state.
At the beginning of his Wednesday interview on “Morning Joe,” it seemed Trump was not thrilled to talk about his second place finish.
“So let’s talk about Iowa. What happened?” “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Trump.
After a long pause, Trump simply responded, “OK.”
The hosts then asked if Trump could hear them, and he said he could.
When asked again what happened in Iowa, Trump responded, “Well, I think I did well there,” adding that he could have done better if he “did a little more work there.”
“The caucus system is a complex system that I was never familiar with,” the Republican presidential candidate continued. “I mean, I was never involved with the caucus system. Don’t forget, Joe, I’m doing this for the first time. I’m like a rookie. And I’m learning fast, and I do learn fast.”
Reality
Another example of how Trump is dangerously unqualified.
“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Donald Trump wrote a Twitter, one of a series of Tweets attacking Cruz and questioning the outcome of the Iowa caucuses.
Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.
Trump slammed Cruz for sending out deceitful mailers that shared voter’s caucus attendance records with their neighbors and warning voters of “VOTER VIOLATION.”
Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud. Also, Cruz sent out a VOTER VIOLATION certificate to thousands of voters.
At a rally Monday afternoon in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that if they happened to see protesters getting ready to lob a tomato, they should “knock the crap out of them.” Trump began his speech by noting that he had received a warning from the “wonderful security guys.” He said:
There may be somebody with tomatoes in the audience. So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell— I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise. It won’t be so much ’cause the courts agree with us too.
