Trump has been accusing Megyn Kelly of unfair treatment ever since he stepped off stage at the first Fox News debate in August.
But he’s ratcheted up those attacks in recent days in an apparent attempt to influence the Fox News moderators ahead of Thursday’s debate.
“I don’t like her. She doesn’t treat me fairly. I’m not a big fan of hers at all,” Trump said during Monday’s interview.
He also claimed that he “might be the best thing that ever happened to her,” because no one had ever heard of her before the August debate.
Trump also suggested he might skip the debate unless he was confident Kelly would treat him fairly, but then walked back those remarks:
“I’ll see. If I think I’ll be treated unfairly, I’ll do something else,” he said. “I think she’s very biased and I don’t think she can treat me fairly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do the debate. I like doing the debates.”
And last week, Trump tweeted that Kelly “should not be allowed” to moderate the debate because of her “conflict of interest and bias.”
Fox responded, “Sooner or later Donald Trump, even if he’s president, is going to have to learn that he doesn’t get to pick the journalists — we’re very surprised he’s willing to show that much fear about being questioned by Megyn Kelly.”
Trump’s indecision was echoed by Lewandowski, who toldNew York, “We haven’t said he’ll be there, and we haven’t said he won’t be there. The bottom line is Megyn Kelly shouldn’t be rewarded for her media bias.”
If terrorists are using the Internet, then take the Internet away. That’s what Donald Trump, the front-runner to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States, suggested last night at the final debate of the year.
Trump tempered the remark by saying the US should shut down the Web in ISIS-controlled Syria and Iraq, but his idea could still be a logistical nightmare.
It was one of many suggestions last night from candidates making grand claims about what they’d do to keep the Internet from helping terrorists and other bad guys. From expanding the NSA’s collection of phone call data to hacking China, everything was on the table.
Trump’s idea might have been the most ambitious. Experts say it would be nearly impossible to implement.
Remember that the Internet is a vast and interconnected network of computers. To cut people out, you have two options: Internet providers on the ground and in the sky would all have to cooperate, or the US would have to send in troops just to destroy all the Internet connections. Even if US soldiers took out on-the-ground infrastructure like towers and computers, there’d still be those pesky satellites orbiting the planet and beaming down information.
Regardless of the technical hurdles, experts say it’s also just a terrible idea.
“Preventing entire populations from getting access to basic information would be a human-rights catastrophe, particularly for areas of the world that are already war-torn,” said Thomas Ristenpart, a computer science professor at Cornell Tech. The ability to find information with Internet connected smartphones is vital to refugees fleeing ISIS in Syria, for example.
CNET reached out to multiple companies that provide the backbone of the Internet, including Amazon, Cisco and Akamai, to learn more about the difficulties of turning the Internet off. They all either declined to comment, did not immediately respond, or asked not to be mentioned in this story because they didn’t believe it was a meaningful discussion.
Reality
I’m a software engineer. Watching Donald Trump and Wolf Blitzer talk about turning off the internet makes my head spin. Like going to a country we don’t like and flipping a switch to shut down a series of inter-connected computers is an actual thing. The sheer lack of any serious understanding of technology makes them both look old and stupid.
CNN reporter Noah Gray is threatened to have his press pass revoked if he doesn’t return to the designated press area by Trump official.
After Noah Gray left “the pen” to document a group of protesters who unveiled a sign reading “Migrant lives matter,” Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski turned to campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks and said: “Hey: Tell Noah, get back in the pen or he’s fucking blacklisted,” according to a recording of the incident.
Reality
The press at Trump events are confined to metal barriers which prevent them from asking the candidate questions or reporting on incidents.
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Wednesday doubled down on his controversial stance that vaccinations are linked to what he described as an autism “epidemic.”
“I’ve seen it,” he said at the second main-stage GOP debate on CNN Wednesday night.
“You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump — it looks just like it’s meant for a horse,” he said of vaccines.
“We’ve had so many instances … a child went to have the vaccine, got very, very sick, and now is autistic.”
The GOP front-runner said he still supported certain vaccines, but in smaller doses over a longer period of time. Under current procedures, he said it’s dangerous for the public.
“Autism has become an epidemic, he said. “It has gotten totally out of control.”
Trump was one of several Republican candidates to question the current medical standards for vaccination, including two medical doctors: neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an ophthalmologist.
Responding to a question, Trump said certain vaccines are “very important.” But he added that there should be “some discretion” given to families — a stance increasingly popular within the GOP despite rising numbers of preventable diseases like the measles.
Carson denied that vaccinations had been linked to autism, citing “numerous studies” that have failed to find any correlations. But he suggested that there still could be a link.
“It has not been adequately revealed to the public what’s actually going on,” Carson said.
Paul, who has previously faced flak for suggesting that vaccines are linked to mental disorders, appeared to walk back his stance on Wednesday.
He described vaccines as “one of the greatest medical discoveries of all time,” while adding, “I’m also for freedom.”
“I ought to have the right so spread my vaccines out, at the very least,” Paul said.
Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism.
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 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, Doctor Rand Paul, and Doctor Ben Carson to propagate these false claims.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump defended himself from the fierce backlash he’s received for criticizing Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly, insisting he said nothing wrong and that he values women.
“Who would say that?” Trump said Sunday. “Do you think I’d make a statement like that? Who would make a statement like that? Only a sick person would even think about that.”
He blamed his Republican presidential opponents for fanning the flames of controversy, and claimed he meant to refer to her “nose and/or ears” — not a woman’s period.
Reality
In the context of the conversation one can extrapolate that Donald Trump was implying Megyn Kelly was angry at him, coincidentally inventing a new idiom about blood and eyes. Regarding the “wherever”, men in the U.S. joke say that women who are menstruating are angrier or more aggressive than they usually are. It doesn’t take a genius to accept that Trump was speaking about Kelly’s lady bits.
He was still angry at Kelly later Friday, delivering bizarre comments on “CNN Tonight” with Don Lemon:
I am very disappointed in Fox News. I think they had an agenda.
I don’t have a lot of respect for Megyn Kelly, she came out, reading her script, trying to be tough and sharp. When you meet her you realize she is not very tough or very sharp. She is zippo.
When asked further about Kelly, who asked the billionaire developer about his previously disparaging comments about women, Trump said:
I just don’t respect her as a journalist. I don’t think she is very good. I think she is highly overrated.
Then went on to say:
You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.
Trump’s fury was sparked by Kelly’s opening question, asking if calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals” is behavior befitting a president.
Trump quipped that he had only called Rosie O’Donnell those names, but Kelly said he had bad mouthed other women “well beyond” the comedian.
