Demerara_Guy posted:

The Hillary Clinton campaign sent a strong signal today that they are about to go after Trump for his close ties to Russia.

ROBBY MOOK, CLINTON CAMPAIGN MANAGER:

I would also point out that Paul Manafort has been pushed out, but that doesn’t mean that the Russians have been pushed out of this campaign. The hand of the Kremlin has been at work in this campaign for some time. It’s clear that they are supporting Donald Trump.

But we now need Donald Trump to explain to us the extent to which the hand of the Kremlin is at the core of his own campaign. There’s a web of financial interests that have not been disclosed. And there are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race?

STEPHANOPOULOS: You’re saying he’s a puppet for the Kremlin?

MOOK: Well, real questions are being raised about that. We — again, there’s a web of financial ties to the Russians that he refuses to disclose. We’ve seen over the last few week, him parroted Vladimir Putin in his own remarks. We saw the Republican Party platform changed. She saw Donald Trump talk about leaving NATO and leaving our Eastern European allies vulnerable to a Russian attack. The gentleman he brought with him to his security briefing just last week is someone who’s on the payroll of the Russia Times, which is a basically a propaganda arm of the Kremlin. He was sitting two seats away from Vladimir Putin at heir 10th Anniversary gala.

There are a lot of questions here. And we need Donald Trump to disclose all of his financial ties and whether his advisers are having meetings with the Kremlin.

One of the many ways to go after Mr. Make America Great Again as too close to one of the country’s biggest adversaries is to highlight is consistent praise of Putin. Even with Manafort gone, Trump continues to insist in his speeches that he will have a good relationship with Russia if he is elected president.

Donald Trump has a fetish for strongman dictator types, but his praise for Putin and the remaining close ties of people on Trump’s staff to the Russian government should be troubling for all voters.

The Clinton campaign hasn’t had to attack Trump because he does such a good job of self-destructing, but as the campaign moves into the fall, it is clear that Hillary Clinton is moving in for the kill as the time is coming for Democrats to work hard to put the Trump campaign out of its misery.

There has to be something to charge him with here. Perhaps as a spy..but nahhhh, he too stupid for that.

Hillary Clinton Says ‘Radical Fringe’ Is Taking Over G.O.P. Under Donald Trump

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER, AUG. 25, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08...ton-speech.html?_r=0

RENO, Nev. — Hillary Clinton on Thursday delivered a blistering denunciation of Donald J. Trump, saying he had embraced the “alt-right” political philosophy and presenting his choice as an especially ominous turn in a presidential election full of them.

In her most direct critique yet connecting the Trump campaign to white nationalists and the conservative fringe, Mrs. Clinton is framing Mr. Trump’s run as unprecedented in modern politics.

“He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party,” she said.

Asserting that a racially charged and “paranoid fringe” had always existed in politics, she said, “It’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.”

The speech, at a community college here, comes one week after Mr. Trump named Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, as his campaign chief. Mr. Bannon has eagerly described the site as “the platform for the alt-right” — a loosely defined and contested term often associated with white nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment.

So it was that Mrs. Clinton was seeking to describe the “alt-right” to a national audience that might have little familiarity with it.

“The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the alt-right,” Mrs. Clinton said. “A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.”

Mrs. Clinton also noted that David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, was “jubilant” on his radio show recently while describing Mr. Trump.

“A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military,” Mrs. Clinton said. “If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?”

It was the kind of formal address that Mrs. Clinton had often pursued to communicate her general election message. She also set aside specific events to sternly criticize Mr. Trump’s plans for domestic and foreign policy, and took to the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., last month — the site of Abraham Lincoln’s “house divided” speech — to appeal to the country’s better angels.

For his part, Mr. Trump has often appeared to court the alt-right community — sometimes more winkingly than others — and his elevation of Mr. Bannon heartened many who identified with the movement.

Mrs. Clinton’s remarks also coincide with an attempted shift in strategy from Mr. Trump, who has spoken with more compassion about people in the country illegally and expressed a desire to win African-American support.

These attempts, which have come in front of predominantly white audiences, have more than occasionally offended minority voters. Mr. Trump has said African-Americans live in neighborhoods resembling “war zones,” struggle to get by on food stamps and constantly face down errant gunfire.

“What do you have to lose?” he has asked.

Mrs. Clinton’s team is straining to hold Mr. Trump to his statements from the Republican primary, reminding voters of his hard line on immigration and arguing that his campaign has encouraged hate groups.

On Thursday morning, Mrs. Clinton posted a campaign video on Twitter featuring clips of white supremacists praising Mr. Trump. It also included a now-famous interview when Mr. Trump initially declined to disavow Mr. Duke.

Near the end of Mrs. Clinton’s video, these words appear: “If Trump wins, they could be running the country.”

Her campaign has also moved to confront other Republicans with Mr. Trump’s most provocative statements.

John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, said that “Republicans up and down the ticket are going to have to choose whether they want to be complicit in this lurch toward extremism, or stand with the voters who can’t stomach it.”

Before the speech on Thursday, Mr. Trump’s campaign suggested that Mrs. Clinton was simply trying to change the subject. “Hillary Clinton’s attempt to delete the single worst week of her political career isn’t going to work,” said Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, citing controversies over Mrs. Clinton’s private email server and the Clinton Foundation.

At the same time, Mr. Trump’s campaign and Breitbart have reveled recently in conspiracy theories about Mrs. Clinton, suggesting she is in the throes of a health crisis.

In an appearance on Monday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Mrs. Clinton theatrically asked the host to check her pulse and opened a jar of pickles to demonstrate her strength.

“Make sure I’m alive,” she joked.

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Source -- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

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Source -- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

Source -- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

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False Statement on Donald Trump

Deport them to 'work with them' to 'assess the situation'

Mike Pence

"Donald Trump’s been completely consistent" about his plan for nonviolent undocumented immigrants.

— PolitiFact National on Sunday, September 4th, 2016

Pence wrongly says Trump has been consistent in immigration views

By Linda Qiu on Sunday, September 4th, 2016 at 5:59 p.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...stent-immigration-v/

============================

Our ruling

We rate Pence’s claim False.

Pence said, "Donald Trump’s been completely consistent" about his plan for nonviolent undocumented immigrants.

Trump has been consistently vague about his policies for undocumented immigrants who live in the United States and largely obey the law.

He’s advocated for mass deportations and then rejected mass deportations before saying there’s a "very good chance" they would happen. He’s said "you have to give them a path" but rejected "amnesty" and then said legal status could be granted to those who leave the country first and apply for reentry.

We rate Pence’s claim False.

============================

Donald Trump made a statesman-like visit to the president of Mexico, then followed that up by a delivering a hard-charging speech on immigration in Phoenix. It left many people wondering if Trump was softening or hardening his immigration policies.

That was the topic for Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who took questions about his running mate on Meet the Press.  

Host Chuck Todd pointed out that Trump has been inconsistent on what to do with approximately 11 million people living in the United States illegally, specifically those who haven’t committed violent crime. Trump has said violent criminals should be deported, a position that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton also holds.

Todd noted that Trump’s position on what to do with nonviolent immigrants isn’t clear.

"I think Donald Trump’s been completely consistent," Pence countered. "And I think he did answer the question."

Todd pressed Pence with more questioning, noting that Latino leaders were concerned about Trump’s policies and what they actually were. But Pence didn’t directly answer.

We looked in depth at Trump’s statements about the undocumented and found that Trump’s answers have not been consistent. At times Trump has been vague, and at other times he’s contradicted himself. His current position seems to be one of wait and see.

No official position

Before he jumped into the presidential race, Trump seemed to advocate for a pathway to citizenship, not deportation, and repeatedly implied that immigration reform was "what’s right." But he warned that it wouldn’t help the Republican Party.

"Every one of those (11 million) votes goes to the Democrats. Now with that, you have to do what’s right, you have to do what’s right. It’s not about the votes necessarily," he said in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference of 2014. "So with immigration, you better be smart and you better be tough."

As a presidential candidate, Trump has advocated the "return of all criminal aliens," detention of those crossing the border and enhanced penalties for visa overstays. (Snapshots show his position page hasn’t changed since September 2015, when his campaign website launched.)

But the position page makes no mention of the undocumented population at large and, in comments throughout this election, he’s floated several different proposals. Let’s run through them.

Proposal No. 1: ‘Have to give them a path’

A few days after he announced his candidacy, Trump suggested he was open to a pathway to citizenship.

"You have to give them a path, and you have to make it possible for them to succeed. But the bad ones, you have to get them out and get them out fast," Trump said in a July 3, 2015, press conference.

Proposal No. 2: Mass deportations and expedited legal return

During most of the GOP primary, Trump consistently advocated for deporting all undocumented immigrants, but allowing some to return through an expedited legal process.

He didn’t give details on how he would pay for and implement the deportations, but remained committed to his position and criticized primary opponents for being weak on the issue and promising "amnesty."

Here are some examples of comments Trump made during that period:

• Sept. 27, 2015, CBS: "If they’ve done well, they’re going out and they’re coming back in legally. ...We’re rounding 'em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized."

• Nov. 11, 2015, MSNBC: "You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely. ... Now they can come back but they have to come back legally."

• Feb. 25, 2016, CNN/Telemundo GOP primary debate: "We either have a country, or we don’t have a country. We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out. They will come back — some will come back, the best, through a process."

Proposal No. 3: No mass deportations and ‘we work with them’

After winning the GOP primary, Trump seemed to walk back his previous calls for removing all of the 11 million undocumented immigrants.

He told Bloomberg in a June 2016 interview that his immigration policies would have "heart." Pressed to clarify his earlier deportation position, he said, "No, I wouldn’t call it mass deportations. … We are going to get rid of a lot of bad dudes who are here, that I can tell you."

"I never liked the media term ‘mass deportation’ — but we must enforce the laws of the land!" he tweeted the same day.

Trump reiterated this position in a Aug. 23 Fox News town hall. Asked whether he would accommodate law-abiding undocumented immigrants with families, he said, "There certainly can be a softening, because we’re not looking to hurt people, we want people — we have some great people in this country. We have some great people in this country. So, but we’re going to follow the laws of this country."

In a follow-up town hall that aired a night later, Trump asked his supporters to indicate via applause what he should do with the noncriminal immigrants: "No. 1, we’ll say throw them out. No. 2, we work with them."

"They’ll pay back taxes. They have to pay taxes. There’s no amnesty," Trump said following the voice vote. "But we work with them. ... Everywhere I go, I get the same reaction. They want toughness. They want firmness. They want to obey the law. But -- but they feel that throwing them out as a whole family when they've been here for a long time -- it's a tough thing."

Proposal No. 4: Possible pathway to legal status and possible mass deportations

The same day as his second Fox News town hall, Trump insisted he hadn’t changed his position. He talked about granting legal status provided the undocumented immigrants leave the United States first, but also suggested there’s a "very good chance" he’ll deport them.

"You can’t take 11 (million) at one time and just say, ‘boom, you’re gone.’ We have to find where these people are. Most people don’t even know where they are," he said to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Aug. 26. "I don’t think it’s a softening. I’ve had people saying it’s a hardening, actually. ... We’re going to deport many people, many, many people."

Given that the vast majority of the undocumented immigrants are not criminals, Cooper asked, would they be able to gain legal status?

"Unless people leave the country — well, when they come back in, if they come back in then they can start paying taxes," Trump responded. "But there is no path to legalization unless they leave the country and come back."

When pressed on whether he would deport undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed a crime, Trump said, "We’re going to see what happens. But there's a very good chance the answer could be yes, but there's no legalization. There's no amnesty. If somebody wants to go the legalization route, what they'll do is they'll go leave the country, hopefully come back in and then we can talk."

Proposal No. 5: Deportations prioritizing criminals, visa overstays and ‘public charges’

In his Aug. 31 Phoenix, Ariz., speech outlining his immigration policy, Trump reiterated that legal status would only be granted to undocumented immigrants who "return home and apply for re-entry like everybody else."

As for deportations, Trump suggested the threat would always loom, but the focus wouldn’t be on law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

"Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation," he said. "Our enforcement priorities will include removing criminals, gang members, security threats, visa overstays, public charges. That is those relying on public welfare or straining the safety net along with millions of recent illegal arrivals and overstays who've come here under this current corrupt administration."

Proposal No. 6: ‘Assess the situation’

A day after his speech, Trump suggested his mind wasn’t quite made up, and that he’d have to see which undocumented immigrants remained after all his policies had been implemented.

"We're going to sit back, we're going to assess the situation," Trump said on Fox News. "We're going to make a decision at that time. I want to see, before we do anything further, I want to see how it shapes up when we have strong, you know, I use the word impenetrable borders."

Our ruling

Pence said, "Donald Trump’s been completely consistent" about his plan for nonviolent undocumented immigrants.

Trump has been consistently vague about his policies for undocumented immigrants who live in the United States and largely obey the law.

He’s advocated for mass deportations and then rejected mass deportations before saying there’s a "very good chance" they would happen. He’s said "you have to give them a path" but rejected "amnesty" and then said legal status could be granted to those who leave the country first and apply for reentry.

We rate Pence’s claim False.

==============================

Published: Sunday, September 4th, 2016 at 5:59 p.m.

Researched by: Linda Qiu, Miriam Valverde

Edited by: Angie Drobnic Holan

Subjects: Candidate Biography, Immigration

Sources:

Forget CNN’s Poll That Shows Trump Leading: A Look At The States Shows Clinton In Control

CNN’s latest poll showing Trump with a two-point national lead reinforces the meaningless nature of national polls. If one wants to understand the real state of the presidential race, look at a new roundup of all 50 state polls.

The CNN/ORC poll gave the media the horserace story that the press has been building for weeks. It is no secret that the mainstream press is craving a close election. Close elections mean more viewers, which means more revenue, so after Clinton has been hammered for weeks with negative coverage, it should be a surprise to no one that the CNN poll found the election to be a statistical tie.

Since US presidential elections are decided by 50 elections in the states, there are limits to what national polling can tell voters. National polling can reveal national mood, but it can also be a byproduct of press coverage. There is also the possibility that the CNN poll is an outlier. The national polling average shows Hillary Clinton maintaining a lead of 3.3 points.

One CNN poll will get supporters on both sides emotional and generate a ton of headlines, but it doesn’t tell voters much about where the election is going. It could be the canary in the coal mine, or it could be a bad poll. The truth won’t be revealed until other independent polls are released.

Because of the way US presidential elections are conducted, state polls matter more than the meaningless national popular vote.

At the state level, Hillary Clinton remains firmly in control of this election. When The Washington Post compared the 50 state poll in 2016 with the 2012 election, they found that Trump is in a much worse position than Mitt Romney was four years ago. Hillary Clinton is doing better than President Obama did with Democrats in eight states. Trump is doing better than Romney did with Republicans in two states.

Donald Trump is not flipping any blue states that Obama won into the Republican column, but Hillary Clinton has put several Romney red states in play for Democrats against Trump.

The national polls get all the headlines, but Democrats have nothing to worry about as long as the swing state polls all continue to point towards Hillary Clinton winning in November.

Trump Offers Up His Lamest Reason Yet For Why Hillary Clinton Shouldn’t Be President

Donald Trump is now claiming that because Hillary Clinton coughed, she is not healthy enough to be President Of The United States.

Video of Clinton coughing due to allergies at Ohio rally yesterday:

https://youtu.be/dDYi6u58O7o

Trump responded by claiming that Clinton’s allergies are a major scandal:

Donald J. Trump

 

✔ @realDonaldTrump

Clinton’s coughing was never trending, so the media wasn’t ignoring a story because there was no story. Donald Trump continues to talk about Hillary Clinton’s health while refusing to release the details of his own medical records. Clinton’s allergies are well known. Details about her allergies were included in the medical summary that she released to the public last year.

Hillary Clinton held her second press conference with reporters in two days, and gave an update on the status of her allergies:

Liz Kreutz

 

✔ @ABCLiz

Donald Trump’s attempt to use Clinton’s allergies as a disqualifier from office may have been the lamest stunt that a presidential nominee has pulled in decades. A man who refuses to release the details of his medical history to the public has no room to talk about his opponent’s health.

Trump continues to throw out distractions on a daily basis to keep journalists and voters from asking the important questions. Every journalist in every interview should ask Trump why he hasn’t released a medical history or summary.

If Donald Trump wants to make health an issue, voters deserve the facts on whether or not the Republican nominee is healthy enough to be president.

That prick wants Russia to hack into Hillary's emails just to expose her and yet he hasn't produced his tax records to the US people.

Latest Polls

Source -- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

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Source -- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

Latest Polls

Source -- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

Donald Trump tried to call out Warren Buffett. He probably didn’t expect this response.

By Max Ehrenfreund, October 10 at 4:00 PM, https://www.washingtonpost.com...xpect-this-response/

====================================

Excerpt

“I have been audited by the IRS multiple times and am currently being audited. I have no problem in releasing my tax information while under audit,” Buffett wrote. “Neither would Mr. Trump — at least he would have no legal problem.”

====================================

In response to a question about if he claimed a $916 million loss to avoid paying income taxes, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said, "Of course I do. And so do all of her donors, or most of her donors," about rival Hillary Clinton. (The Washington Post)

In Sunday night's town hall debate, Donald Trump deflected questions about his taxes by claiming that Hillary Clinton's wealthy supporters had also avoided taxes by exploiting the law. He mentioned several, including Warren Buffett, by name.

Buffett responded with a statement on Monday, saying that Trump was incorrect. The octogenarian billionaire wrote that he had never taken advantage of the rule that Trump might have used to avoid paying tax on nearly $1 billion in income, according to several pages from one of his tax returns that were disclosed recently.

Anderson Cooper, one of the moderators, asked Trump whether he had used a $916 million loss that he reportedly claimed on the tax return from 1995 to reduce his taxes. “Of course I do. Of course I do, and so do all of her donors, or most of her donors,” Trump said.

It is unclear how Trump lost that much money, or if he used loopholes in the tax code to generate a legal loss on paper.

[Trump personally lobbied Congress to give real estate developers bigger tax breaks]

In any case, since Trump was able to claim that he was $916 million poorer, the Internal Revenue Service would not have forced him to pay taxes on any income for at least 15 years until he had made up that loss. A loss that is counted against future income is sometimes called a “carry forward.”

Trump said that such maneuvers were common, mentioning several wealthy donors supporting his Democratic rival.

“Many of her friends took bigger deductions,” the Republican nominee said. “Warren Buffett took a massive deduction.”

It was not clear what deduction of Buffett's Trump meant, but Buffett's statement Monday made clear he had never counted losses from past years against his personal income.

“I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944, when I was 13. (Though, being a slow starter, I owed only $7 in tax that year,)" Buffett wrote. “I have copies of all 72 of my returns and none uses a carryforward.”

In principle, experts on taxation say it makes sense for authorities to give taxpayers a break for past losses. How much entrepreneurs or businesses pay in taxes should depend on their average income over several years. They should not be penalized if they work in volatile industries that produce major gains one year and punishing losses the next.

Warren Buffett. (Nati Harnik/AP)

There are several reasons that Buffett might never have used a carry forward, although he did not provide any details in his statement. It is possible that Buffett, renowned for his acumen as an investor, simply has never lost enough money in one year.

Also, as a shareholder in his corporation, Berkshire Hathaway, Buffet would not be able to count any losses against his personal income because his assets are in a different legal category than Trump's.

[The one tax break that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree on]

Trump and his allies have implied that there was nothing out of the ordinary about his $916 million loss. Yet the contrast with Buffett is a reminder that the benefits Trump claimed might well have been unavailable to most taxpayers — although, without more information from his returns, it is impossible to know which provisions of the tax code he exploited and how much money they saved him.

As a real estate developer, Trump probably owned his properties through legal entities that would have allowed him to claim losses against his personal income, rather than against corporate income.

In 1995, Trump was recovering from a few difficult years in which he was forced to put several of his properties in bankruptcy and surrender many of his assets to his creditors. Some experts have suggested that Trump could have exploited a loophole in bankruptcy law dating to 1980, which could have allowed him to write down a major loss on his return and essentially claim double the benefits from having his debts canceled.

Congress closed that loophole in 2002.

There is no evidence that any of Trump's tax maneuvers were illegal. Unlike other presidential nominees, however, he has declined to release his complete tax returns, citing a continuing audit.

“I have been audited by the IRS multiple times and am currently being audited. I have no problem in releasing my tax information while under audit,” Buffett wrote. “Neither would Mr. Trump — at least he would have no legal problem.”