Tag: Donald Trump

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Politifact: Donald Trump Wrong On Tim Kaine Accepting More Gifts Than Bob McDonnell

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump

Upon the announcement of Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia joining Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket for the White House, Donald Trump tried to paint Kaine as somehow “corrupt” for taking more gifts during his time as an elected official in Virginia than former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

McDonnell was convicted for taking gifts that he did not disclose.

From the Pulitzer Prize winning website, Politifact:

“Bob McDonnell took a fraction of what Kaine took,” said Trump, the GOP presidential nominee. “And I think, to me, it’s a big problem. Now, how do you take all these gifts? Hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

We wondered whether McDonnell’s gift-taking was, in fact, “a fraction” of Kaine’s. Trump’s campaign did not respond to our request for proof. So we set out on our own, comparing gifts Kaine received as lieutenant governor and governor from 2002 to 2010 to those McDonnell accepted as attorney general from 2006 to 2009 and as governor from 2010 to 2014.

During those years, Virginia didn’t limit gifts to its politicians; the only requirement was that officeholders disclose what they accepted.

We researched the online files of the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonprofit organization that keeps records of campaign contributions and financial disclosure statements filed by state politicians.

[snip]

Kaine accepted $162,083 in gifts as lieutenant governor and governor, all of which was disclosed as required by state law.

McDonnell disclosed accepting $275,707 in gifts as attorney general and governor. And there was another $177,000 that he didn’t disclose. That comes to a total of $452,707 in gifts – almost three times Kaine’s total.

Trump has got this one dead wrong. We rate his statement Pants on Fire.

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Donald Trump Leads Hillary Clinton +5 In Latest CNN/ORC Poll

Politico reports that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump got a solid bounce out of his convention:

Donald Trump got a bounce from the Republican National Convention, jumping out in front of Hillary Clinton in a new CNN/ORC International poll released Monday, conducted in the days following the party gathering.

Trump leads Clinton 48 percent to 45 percent in a two-way matchup, compared with the presumptive Democratic nominee’s seven-point advantage (49 percent to 42 percent) in the CNN/ORC poll conducted the previous week.

In a four-way matchup with Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Trump’s advantage actually increases to 5 points—44 percent to 39 percent, while Johnson earned 9 percent and Stein 3 percent.

The previous four-way survey found Clinton with a five-point lead over Trump, 42 percent to 37 percent, while Johnson had 13 percent and Stein 5 percent.

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Donald Trump Tweets Bernie Sanders Is “Weak And Somewhat Pathetic”

Republican presidential candidate took to Twitter today to criticize Sen. Bernie Sanders saying he is “turning out to be a weak and somewhat pathetic figure.”

I’d remind you all that Trump has repeatedly begged Sanders’ supporters to vote for him.

Good luck with that, Donald.

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Most Dubious Presidential Endorsement Of 2016

Former leader of the KKK absolutely LOVED Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s acceptance speech last night.

In related news, Duke has announced today that The Donald has inspired him, and he will now run for the U.S. Senate seat currently being held by David Vitter, who is retiring this year.

Via The Hill:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee does not back Duke’s run, executive director Ward Baker said.

“We will not support David Duke. Several GOP candidates in LA will have a great impact on our country. He is not one of them,” Baker tweeted Friday morning.

Duke unsuccessfully ran for the Senate, House and governor of Louisiana during the 1990s. He is also a convicted felon who pleaded guilty in 2002 to cheating on his taxes and bilking his supporters.

Duke is an enthusiastic supporter of Trump, once calling him the “white knight” for “European American” interests.

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Awkward RNC Moments

I’m not sure if the most awkward moment of the GOP convention was last night’s Ted Cruz “failure to launch endorsement,” or this when Donald Trump went in to smooch his very homophobic running mate, Gov. Mike Pence.

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Donald Trump Threatens Co-Author Of THE ART OF THE DEAL

Tony Schwartz, the co-author of the Donald Trump memoir “The Art Of The Deal,” has been threatened with legal action for speaking out about his former “collaborator” and current Republican presidential candidate.

Via the New Yorker:

On Monday, July 18th, the day that this magazine published my interview with Schwartz, and hours after Schwartz appeared on “Good Morning America” to voice his concerns about Trump’s “impulsive and self-centered” character, Jason D. Greenblatt, the general counsel and vice-president of the Trump Organization, issued a threatening cease-and-desist letter to Schwartz. (You can read the full letter at the bottom of this post.) In it, Greenblatt accuses Schwartz—who has likened his writing of the flattering book to putting “lipstick on a pig”—of making “defamatory statements” about the Republican nominee and claiming that he, not Trump, wrote the book, “thereby exposing” himself to “liability for damages and other tortious harm.”

Greenblatt demands that Schwartz send “a certified check made payable to Mr. Trump” for all of the royalties he had earned on the book, along with Schwartz’s half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance. (The memoir has sold approximately a million copies, earning Trump and Schwartz each several million dollars.) Greenblatt also orders Schwartz to issue “a written statement retracting your defamatory statements,” and to offer written assurances that he will not “generate or disseminate” any further “baseless accusations” about Trump.

On Thursday, reached by e-mail on an airplane, Schwartz said that he would continue to speak out against Trump, and that he would make no retractions or apologies. “The fact that Trump would take time out of convention week to worry about a critic is evidence to me not only of how thin-skinned he is, but also of how misplaced his priorities are,” Schwartz wrote. He added, “It is axiomatic that when Trump feels attacked, he will strike back. That’s precisely what’s so frightening about his becoming president.”

Click here for the original interview with Schwartz where he describes his experience of trying to get “The Art Of The Deal” written. Quite eye-opening.