Donald Trump has found his audience, and he knows what they want. So he’s giving it to them. …KevinDrum,MoJo
Donald Trump is, well, trumpeting some false statistics. Kevin Drum nails him with this:
I don’t know what the “Crime Statistics Bureau” in San Francisco is, and I don’t think I want to know, but one of the most well-established facts about murder in the United States is that it’s pretty racially segregated. Whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks, etc. But today Trump decided to tweet the CSB graphic on the right, for no readily apparent reason. And wouldn’t you know it: it contains a wee racial error. It claims that most whites are killed by blacks, but in 2014, which is the latest full-year homicide data available from the FBI, 82 percent of whites were killed by other whites and only 15 percent were killed by blacks. ...DrumMoJo
You don’t have to work very hard to get the facts. You wind up learning that Trump has reversed the stats to get the result his fans want. Of course, if you’re white, underinformed, and feel threatened by “those people,” you’ll take Trump’s trumpery very seriously.
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By the way, there appears to be no such outfit as the Crime Statistic Bureau in San Francisco.
EDITOR’S UPDATE: Trump’s over the top statements setting a new lower bar in American politics over the past several days have been breathtaking. Here are a few:
–Trump insists he saw thousands of people (implication is they were Muslims) cheering as the twin towers came down on 9/11. This assertion was denounced by Jersey City’s mayor and many others. Trump has double downed:
Trump had said Saturday during a campaign rally in Alabama that he saw these crowds cheering, a comment he reiterated on ABC’s “This Week.”
“There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down,” Trump said. “I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down, as those buildings came down, and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time.”
The Anti-Defamation League (which can’t be confused as being an Islamic organization) has denounced Trump:
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an international NGO that monitors anti-Semitism, said: “It is unfortunate that Donald Trump is giving new life to long-debunked conspiracy theories about 9/11.”
“This seems a variation of the anti-Semitic myth that a group of Israelis were seen celebrating as the Twin Towers fell,” the ADL said.
“His comments are irresponsible — not to mention factually challenged.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump became the first serious candidate of a major party running for President who, in effect, came out and endorsed his followers beating up a demonstrator. Usually candidates pay at least iip service to the concept that American politics rejects the use of violence against those who too loudly protest or oppose. As of this writing Trump has not distanced himself or revised his reaction:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Fox News on Sunday morning that a Black Lives Matter protester thrown out of his Birmingham rally perhaps deserved to be “roughed up” for being “obnoxious.”
In response to being asked about the protester being “roughed up,” Trump said: “I don’t know. Rough up? Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
“The man that was — I don’t know, you say ‘roughed up’ — he was so obnoxious and so loud. He was screaming. I had 10,000 people in the room yesterday — 10,000 people. And this guy started screaming by himself,” Trump continued.
“I have lot of fans and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy, who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble,” he said.
Mercutio Southall Jr., a well-known Birmingham activist, heckled Trump during the rally. He said he was punched and then pushed down by attendees.
He said the incident began after a Trump supporter knocked a phone out of the hand of another activist who was recording the event.
“They said ‘Go home, n****r, and somebody punched me,” Southall told AL.com. “I punched back. You know don’t do the turn-the-other-cheek (expletive).”
He said people encircled him, and he was being pushed and punched from every direction. Someone hit him from behind, and the next thing he knew, he was at the bottom of pile. He was kicked in the stomach, and the chest, both men and women. “I got enough people off of me that I was able to get up a little bit,” he said. “Somebody got behind me and started trying to choke me out.”
Trump has also come out for renewed use of waterboarding:
Donald Trump said the United States should bring back waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques to fight the Islamic State, saying “we have to be strong” in the face of extreme brutality.
“You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there,” the GOP front-runner told George Stephanopoulos in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “They use chopping off people’s heads. They use drowning people. . . . We have to be tough.”
Stephanopoulos was asking Trump about comments he made recently to Yahoo News that after Paris, the United States needs to be doing things that were “unthinkable” a year ago to fight the Islamic State.
Trump affirmed Sunday that waterboarding was what he had in mind.
“I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they’d do to us,” Trump said. “. . . I would absolutely bring back interrogation, and strong interrogation.”
He says wants a database to track Muslims in the United States:
Donald Trump “would certainly implement” a database system tracking Muslims in the United States, the Republican front-runner told NBC News on Thursday night.
“I would certainly implement that. Absolutely,” Trump said in Newton, Iowa, in between campaign town halls.
“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” he added. “We should have a lot of systems.”
When asked whether Muslims would be legally obligated to sign into the database, Trump responded, “They have to be — they have to be.”
…..brahim Hooper, national spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, sounded incredulous when he was asked about Trump’s comments, telling NBC News: “We’re kind of at a loss for words.”
“What else can you compare this to except to prewar Nazi Germany?” Hooper asked. “There’s no other comparison, and [Trump] seems to think that’s perfectly OK.”
Rabbi Jack Moline, executive director of the nonprofit Interfaith Alliance, drew the same comparison Thursday night.
“My father was in World War II, and he fought to preserve America against what the Nazis were doing,” Moline told NBC News.
“This is exactly why there is an America, to not be like that,” he said.
As polls show him zooming in popularity among GOP voters, he says it’s time to close some Muslim mosques:
The never-ending predictions of Donald Trump’s demise received a new blow on Wednesday as polls showed the real estate mogul leading in three states, two of which are homes to fellow Republican presidential candidates.
The poll news came as Trump doubled down on a pledge to shut down mosques where imams preach the gospel of radical Islam.
“Nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you understand it,” Trump said on Fox News. “We’re going to have no choice, absolutely no choice.”
Asked for details on what he would do, Trump replied: “You’re going to have to do something. Some bad things are happening and a lot of them are happening in the mosque, and you’re going to have to do something.”
The Washington Monthly’s David Atkins finds Trump’s over-the-top comments hard to keep up with and perhaps, he suggests, that’s the point:
I sometimes get tired of writing about Donald Trump and the GOP presidential race, but he has said so many outrageous things in the last 48 hours that the subject cannot be avoided in a serious political forum. Many people wish political commentators would simply ignore Trump as unworthy of news coverage, but failing to talk about it won’t diminish his support with the GOP base—and in any case when the leading frontrunner of the Republican Party says wildly objectionable things, it merits discussion.
The problem is that it’s hard to know what to say about his statements without degenerating into what most people would view as hyperbole. Words like “fascist” and “liar” start to creep into the mind, but those sorts of sentiments are unfit for a respectable publication—and in any case, most people do not want to admit even to themselves that a totalitarian charlatan is actually leading in the GOP polls by a wide margin and is currently leading the Democratic frontrunner in head-to-head polling.
….Trump’s incessant barrage of outrageous pronouncements is reminiscent of the Gish Gallop strategy of argumentation: keeping your opponent on their heels and unable to debate effectively by throwing out so many false and misleading statements that it becomes too difficult to address any single one of them or make your own case. It’s a common creationist tactic, and a common tool of hucksters and swindlers everywhere.
Donald Trump is doing the Presidential campaign version of it in the 24-hour media cycle. No sooner does he make one absurd and dangerous statement than he follows it up with a different one, all the while making himself the center of attention and drowning out both his opponents and the ability to effectively respond to the previous outrage.
It’s sometimes hard to imagine what general election attack ads against Trump would even look like. Donald Trump isn’t an oppo gold mine—he’s more like a giant strobe-lit rave party of glittering, disorienting attack ad opportunities. …..So where does one begin and how does one focus? Do you poll 40 of his past statements and ask people how objectionable they are on a 10-point scale? It’s actually a significant problem for writers and political professionals alike.
The Republican base and conservative politics aren’t the only thing under a microscope here. We’re also seeing a test of the ability of our media and political professional class to hold a hucksterish gish galloper like Trump accountable. So far it’s not looking so good.
Dean Obeidallah writing on The Daily Beast:
I have never truly feared for the well-being of my family or friends because of the words uttered by an American politician. But that has changed after Donald Trump’s comments over the past few days about Muslims.
When I tell you that Trump’s remarks about what he has planned for Muslims in America if elected president are bone chilling, I’m not exaggerating. But to me the most frightening—and yes, I mean frightening—incident in all of this is what happened Saturday at Trump’s rally in Birmingham, Alabama. It was not just his words, but the way Trump conveyed them and the setting that conjured up a truly dark time in human history.
During his rally Saturday deep in the heart of Dixie, Trump told the crowd of thousands in no uncertain terms what Muslims could expect if he leads our nation. “Just to set it clear,” Trump stated, pausing slightly for dramatic effect. A sternness then came over his face as he declared emphatically: “I want surveillance of these people.”
You see to Trump, we are not your fellow Americans who are teachers, doctors, taxi drivers, member of Congress, etc. No, he has dehumanized us into a faceless group he calls “these people.” And Trump has unilaterally determined that “these people,” Muslim Americans, are not worthy of the same rights as other Americans. That we, Muslims, are less than fully American simply because of our faith.
Trump then implored the crowd to cheer for his plan that would strip the constitutional rights of a minority group in America with the call, “Are you ready for this? Are you ready?” And on cue, thousands in the crowd cheered as their leader beckoned.
He notes a few other things Trump said, and also points to the beating up of the African-American demonstrator, then writes:
And many on social media made it clear that if Trump ever required American Muslims to register with the government, they would too, even they weren’t Muslim. One of the most moving shows of support came from Rabbi Joshua Stanton, a man who says he tries to avoid politics, but still felt compelled to pen a touching article titled, “Register Me, Too, Mr. Trump.”
The GOP is at a crossroads that will define its party for years. They can nominate Trump, a man who has demonized American minority groups, or choose someone who truly embraces American values. But if Trump is the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, they will have made it clear to America that the Grand Old Party is no longer the party of Lincoln, but the party of hate.