Vetting Herr Trump!! ...should be easy! (GD 16)

[Her Sister]

The complete guide to how Trump can make himself the first American dictator
http://qz.com/630672/here-is-the-playbook-for-how-trump-can-make-himself-the-first-american-dictator/

"If Trump is elected president, will constitutional law and American political institutions protect us from a would-be dictator? Europeans worry about the emergence of Caesarism in the United States, just as the founders did when they invented the presidency. Authoritarianism is making gains around the world; why not here? Of course, Trump may not want to be a dictator. He has repeatedly stated his desire to make “deals,” implying a willingness to cooperate with Congress. But there is no reason to believe anything he says; many of his actions and statements are those of someone with a dictatorial mentality if nothing else, and his popular support derives from his authoritarian image: he appeals to people who yearn for a strongman to protect them. So the question is worth asking. What is the answer?..... more...."



21 Questions For Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston
http://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump/

"I have covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years — including breaking the story that in 1990, when he claimed to be worth $3 billion but could not pay interest on loans coming due, his bankers put his net worth at minus $295 million. And so I have closely watched what Trump does and what government documents reveal about his conduct.
Reporters, competing Republican candidates, and voters would learn a lot about Trump if they asked for complete answers to these 21 questions. more...

10. A federal judge later found you conspired to cheat both the Polish workers, who were paid less than $5 an hour cash with no benefits, and the union health and welfare fund. You testified that you did not notice the Polish workers, whom the judge noted were easy to spot because they were the only ones on the work site without hard hats."



7 Takeaways from Vanity Fair’s 1990 Profile of Donald Trump
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/donald-trump-marie-brenner-ivana-divorce

"Twenty-five years ago, this magazine’s Marie Brenner spent some time with Trump for an investigation into the dissolution of his marriage to Ivana Trump. In retrospect, the story has all the trappings of a perfect Trump piece: discord between reality and Trump’s claims about it, accusations of disloyalty, and triumphant highs amid a string of batted-away lows. Here are seven takeaways that still matter.

1. Trump’s views on women are repugnant. Here’s how Donald explained the tabloid fascination with Ivana: “When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass—a good one!—there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left.”


I think we can say we are past thinking that he respects women!

It is close to a fact, ain't it?

“You brag abt many affairs w/ married women,” the senator tweeted on Jan. 24, addressing Trump. “Have you repented? To harmed children & spouses? Do you think it matters?”
In The Art of the Deal, Trump boasted about bedding other men’s wives.
“If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller,” he wrote.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/27/christians-cringe-at-donald-trump-s-sexy-past.html


I am no christian or religious but the thought of a man bragging that he gets other men wives is kinda icky in my book.

[Her Sister]

1. Melania Trump Knauss GQ interview (GD 16)

It’s easy to think America has changed a lot since Hillary Rodham Clinton was chastised in the early ’90s for her ambition as First Lady—refusing to sit at home and make cookies. But our conception of a presidential spouse hasn’t evolved much. Michelle Obama, a Princeton graduate and legal hotshot who was once her husband’s law-school-era mentor, has been mainly confined to dealing with soft issues: childhood obesity, planting vegetables. Rather than Hillary or Michelle, it was Laura Bush—a teacher who supported her husband’s turning from bottle to Bible—who seemed most suited to Middle America’s idea (or at least a man’s idea) of a First Lady. Of course, the paragon of them all is still Jackie Kennedy, endlessly glamorous and endlessly tolerant of her husband’s philandering.


Melania is as fastidious a wife as she is a mother, which Donald appreciates. Things come easy with her. “I work very hard from early in the morning till late in the evening,” Donald told Larry King in 2005. “I don’t want to go home and work at a relationship.” To the twice-divorced Donald, Melania is terrific. He’s never heard her fart or make doodie, as he once told Howard Stern. (Melania has said the key to the success of her marriage is separate bathrooms.) He can trust her to take her birth control every day, he boasted to Stern; she’s just amazing that way. She has the perfect proportions—five feet eleven, 125 pounds—and great boobs, which is no trivial matter. Stern once asked Trump what he would do if Melania were in a terrible car accident, God forbid, and lost the use of her left arm, developed an oozing red splotch near her eye, and mangled her left foot. Would Donald stay with her?


“How do the breasts look?” Trump asked.


“The breasts are okay,” Stern replied. Then, yeah, of course Trump stays. “Because that’s important.” There are other pluses. He appreciates Melania’s restraint when it comes to Shopping While Trump. “She’s never taken advantage of that situation, okay, as many women would have, frankly,” he has said. (“I prefer quality over quantity,” Melania tells me.) Donald does his part to make things work, too. “He is a very understanding husband,” Melania once told an interviewer. “If I say, ‘I need an hour, I’m going to take a bath,’ or I’m having a massage, he doesn’t have nothing against it. He’s very supportive in that way.” She lets him have his space; she’s not “needy” or “nagging,” as she tells me.


As for passions beyond the familial, there are a few. Melania dabbles in design. Her line of affordable gem-spangled jewelry and watches, launched on QVC, reportedly sold out in 45 minutes during its initial broadcast. (Melania’s caviar-infused anti-aging creams haven’t sold as well, though a federal judge ruled in her favor in a lawsuit she filed against its promoters.)

http://www.gq.com/story/melania-trump-gq-interview

[Her Sister]

2. Melania Trump's father very similar to Trump in looks/personality

Her parents Viktor and Amalija Knavs in Aberdeen, Scotland in 2011. They are from Slovenia.

She changed/Germanized her last name to Knauss.

Trump is 5 years younger than her father, Viktor.

[Her Sister]

4. In The Art of the Deal, Trump boasted about bedding other men’s wives. “If I told the real stories

In The Art of the Deal, Trump boasted about bedding other men’s wives.
“If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller,” he wrote.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/27/christians-cringe-at-donald-trump-s-sexy-past.html

[Her Sister]

5. Donald Trump, Polish Workers, and Trump Tower: You Decide (Clip from Trump:What's the Deal?)

[Native]

6. Loved Johnsonton's piece, thanks! Btw - your link to the VF article was cut off @ the end.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/donald-trump-marie-brenner-ivana-divorce

and here's a link to Brenner's entire piece from 1990: http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner

[Her Sister]

7. Thanks very much! Fixed the link!

[Her Sister]

8. Proof That Donald Trump's a Pathological Liar

For the next time someone asks you to prove it – a compilation of articles. There's also a subsection called Proof Donald Trump's Lying About Past Clinton Conspiracies.

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/joshuaepstein/here_s_the_proof_that_donald_trump_s_a_pathological_liar_you_ve_been_asking_for_trolls?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewCivilRightsMovement+%28The+New+Civil+Rights+Movement%29

[Her Sister]

9. Read every horrible thing Donald Trump has said about women and tell me he's not a sexist (GD 16 GP)

Good Article with links, good for future reference:

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/16/11683122/donald-trump-misogynist-sexist

Donald Trump is a bigot.

This is not exactly a secret. He rose to political prominence by claiming the first black president wasn't really American but Kenyan. He launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants to the US "rapists," and doubled down when criticized. His most famous proposal is a total moratorium on Muslim entry to the United States.

But a report from the New York Times's Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey has shone a light on a less examined side of Trump's bigotry: his long, persistent hatred and mistreatment of women. Former New Republic editor Franklin Foer has described misogyny as Trump's "one core belief." He's not wrong.

The accusations in the Times's exposé — some denied by Trump, some not — are damning:

Temple Taggart, a former Miss Utah, said that he kissed her on the lips at the Miss USA pageant, twice, against her will.

Long article as the list is quite extensive/long;

[Her Sister]

10. "ariannahuff is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her

Follow

Donald J. TrumpVerified account
?@realDonaldTrump
.@ariannahuff is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man- he made a good decision

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/240462265680289792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[Her Sister]

11. Shady accounting underpins Trump’s wealth

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-money-net-worth-223662

NEW YORK — Donald Trump claims a net worth of more than $10 billion and an income of $557 million. But he appears to get there only by overvaluing properties and ignoring his expenses.
POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen financial experts and Trump’s fellow multimillionaires about the presumptive Republican nominee’s financial statement. Their conclusion: The real estate magnate’s bottom line — what he actually puts in his own pocket — could be much lower than he suggests. Some financial analysts said this, and a very low tax rate, is why Trump won’t release his tax returns.

“I know Donald, I’ve known him a long time, and it gets under his skin if you start writing about the reasons he won’t disclose his returns,” said one prominent hedge fund manager who declined to be identified by name so as not to draw Trump’s ire. “You would see that he doesn’t have the money that he claims to have and he’s not paying much of anything in taxes.”
Trump is certainly wealthy. But in a campaign where the New Yorker has portrayed himself as the biggest, the richest, the classiest and the best at everything, disclosing that he is less rich than he lets on could be damaging. And it is a line of attack Democrats are already using and hope to pound away on until November.
The case against Trump’s accounting of his wealth: His businesses apparently generate a lot of revenue but may not put much cash in his pocket; He assigns himself a net worth that is impossible to verify and may be based in part on fantasy; And he is selling assets and increasing debt in ways that suggest a man scrambling for ready cash.

continues in link...

[Her Sister]

12. 21 Questions For Donald Trump ~ by David cay Johnston

I have covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years — including breaking the story that in 1990, when he claimed to be worth $3 billion but could not pay interest on loans coming due, his bankers put his net worth at minus $295 million. And so I have closely watched what Trump does and what government documents reveal about his conduct.

Reporters, competing Republican candidates, and voters would learn a lot about Trump if they asked for complete answers to these 21 questions.

Here are 21 Questions for Donald Trump:

So, Mr. Trump…

1. You call yourself an “ardent philanthropist,” but have not donated a dollar to The Donald J. Trump Foundation since 2006. You’re not even the biggest donor to the foundation, having given about $3.7 million in the previous two decades while businesses associated with Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment gave the Trump Foundation $5 million. All the money since 2006 has come from those doing business with you.

How does giving away other people’s money, in what could be seen as a kickback scheme, make you a philanthropist?

2. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman successfully sued you, alleging your Trump University was an “illegal educational institution” that charged up to $35,000 for “Trump Elite” mentorships promising personal advice from you, but you never showed up and your “special” list of lenders was photocopied from Scotsman Guide, a magazine found at any bookstore.

Why did you not show up?

More in link: http://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump/

[Her Sister]

13. A couple of articles in a Scottish newspaper reveal how Trump's mother emigrated to the USA.

A couple of articles in a Scottish newspaper reveal how Trump's mother emigrated to the USA.

The mysterious Mary Trump: The full untold story of how a young Scotswoman escaped to New York and raised a US presidential candidate

SHE was the mother of a potential future president of the United States, yet Mary Trump’s early life and particularly how she came to America is shrouded in mystery.

It has long been maintained that Trump’s Scottish mother Mary Anne Macleod met the Republican candidate-elect’s father Fred on a holiday or trip to New York in 1930. She was apparently introduced to him at a party by her sister, Catherine.

It is a tale that has been told so often, apparently never corrected by the Trump family, that it is accepted as the truth by most of the media – the BBC recently sent a reporter to her native village on the Isle of Lewis to investigate Mrs Trump’s roots and he faithfully repeated that “holiday” version.

...

Today The National provides proof that far from being on holiday, Mary Anne Macleod Trump was a poor immigrant who arrived in New York with just $50 in her purse and worked as a domestic servant in the city for at least four years.

http://www.thenational.scot/news/the-mysterious-mary-trump-the-full-untold-story-of-how-a-young-scotswoman-escaped-to-new-york-and-raised-a-us-presidential-candidate.17824

An inconvenient truth? Donald Trump's Scottish mother was a low-earning migrant

SHE was one of the poor, the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, who became a multi-millionaire philanthropist and mother of an almost certain Presidential candidate. The question is, why has Donald Trump never put anyone right about the true story of his mother’s immigration?

Perhaps he didn’t know. On the face of it, the tale of a poor Scottish girl making it rich in the USA and giving birth to a possible president should be a great backstory for any candidate yet, given his views on poor immigrants, maybe “the Donald” wishes to downplay Mary Anne Macleod Trump’s early status – though as The National has shown, she was never an illegal immigrant.

Perhaps it may have something to do with this position statement on immigration, taken from the Trump campaign website: “The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working-class Americans – including immigrants themselves and their children – to earn a middle-class wage. Nearly half of all immigrants and their US-born children currently live in or near poverty, including more than 60 per cent of Hispanic immigrants.

...

How inconvenient for the would-be president that "low-earning worker" was exactly the status of Mary Anne Macleod when she emigrated from Scotland to the USA in 1930.

http://www.thenational.scot/news/an-inconvenient-truth-donald-trumps-scottish-mother-was-a-low-earning-migrant.17822
8

[Her Sister]

14. Trump: Documentary The Donald Suppressed, Free At Last

http://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-documentary-the-donald-suppressed-free-at-last/

A documentary that Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, killed 25 years ago with threats of litigation is now available for all to view on the Internet.

Trump: What’s The Deal? paints a powerful and disturbing picture of a financial Dorian Gray whose public image bears little resemblance to his conduct away from the cameras, including hiring actors for $50 each to applaud at his campaign announcement.

In public, Trump presents himself as a businessman so skilled his deals are an art form. The 80-minute documentary peels back this façade. Hidden from public view, the documentary shows Trump manipulating politicians and the criminal justice system, pocketing millions in taxpayer welfare, not paying people he hired, doing some of his biggest deals with mobsters, retaining a cocaine dealer as his helicopter pilot, and evidently benefiting from having his sister working in the Justice Department before winning appointment as a federal judge. Former advisors and employees describe furious tirades that no one, not even his family, could escape.

The film reveals how Trump repeatedly engaged in questionable conduct — such as intimidating tenants of a Manhattan building he wanted to empty — but drew little attention from law enforcement. One top city official says on camera that Mayor Abe Beame, a childhood pal of Trump’s father Fred, instructed him that Donald Trump was to get whatever he wanted from city government.

The documentary also delves into Trump family values — a matter presumably of deep interest to conservative Republicans, many of whom tell pollsters they want the casino mogul to be America’s next president.

Here it is:

[Her Sister]

15. It’s not just Saddam Hussein: Trump has a long history of googly-eyed admiration for dictators Trump

It’s not just Saddam Hussein: Trump has a long history of googly-eyed admiration for dictators
Trump has quite the track record of praising dictators for supposedly being strong and effective leaders

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/06/its_not_just_saddam_hussein_trump_has_a_long_history_of_goggly_eyed_admiration_for_dictators/

Donald Trump, ever ready to snatch the news cycle away from Hillary Clinton (even when the news about her isn’t flattering), did it again Tuesday night during a rally, when he praised ousted and executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

“He was a bad guy — really bad guy,” Trump said, in his standard ass-covering way, before he launched forth with the meat of his opinion. “But you know what? He did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists. Over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism.”

(To quote “Game of Thrones,” “nothing before the word ‘but’ really counts.”)

This isn’t the first time that Trump has trotted out that non-witticism about the “Harvard of terrorism.” He rolled out that same line in January 2014, at an event for the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and the New England Council.

“You know, whether you like Saddam Hussein or not, he used to kill terrorists,” Trump said. “I mean, terrorists did not have fun in that country. Now, that’s the Harvard of terrorism.”

In 2011, he gave an interview to Human Events sharing the same sentiments, saying, “He didn’t give them a trial like this country, where the trial lasts for 21 years. He used to shoot the terrorists and kill them. There were no terrorists, very little terrorists in Iraq.”

And, in February this year, Trump offered Hussein the highest praise he can imagine: That he’s not “politically correct”.

“Saddam Hussein killed terrorists,” Trump told rally-goers in South Carolina. “He didn’t do it politically correct.”

This infatuation with Hussein is just part of a larger pattern of Trump’s. Trump loves a dictator. He can’t help but gush with praise at those who use violence to oppress their people.

At the top of the list, of course, is Vladimir Putin, who Trump repeatedly swoons over like he’s a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert.

In 2015, Trump went on “The O’Reilly Factor” to gush over how awesome it is that Putin is backing Bashar al Assad.

[Her Sister]

16. In_Your_Guts__You_Know_He's_Nuts.

[Her Sister]

17. Spot a Dictator: