Hillary Clinton says presidential rival Donald Trump appears to have violated US laws, after a report said he broke a trade embargo with Cuba.
Newsweek reports that Mr Trump's company secretly conducted business in Cuba, violating the US trade embargo against the country.
The company allegedly spent at least $68,000 (£52,300) in Cuba in 1998.
Mr Trump's spokesman Kellyanne Conway said the money was not paid, and that he was against deals with Cuba.
Mr Trump has also repeatedly said he had rejected offers to invest in Cuba.
The Newsweek report says Mr Trump's company funnelled the cash through a US consulting firm to make it appear legal.
Mrs Clinton said: "We have laws in our country, and the efforts that Trump was making to get into the Cuban market - putting his business interests ahead of the laws of the United States and the requirements that businesses were operating under with sanctions shows that he puts his personal and business interests ahead of the laws and values and the policies of the United States of America."
"This is something they're going to have to give a response to," said Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American senator from Florida who has endorsed Mr Trump. "I mean, it was a violation of American law, if that's how it happened.
"I hope the Trump campaign is going to come forward and answer some questions about this, because if what the article says is true - and I'm not saying that it is, we don't know with 100% certainty - I'd be deeply concerned about it," he told a podcast hosted by ESPN and ABC.
Donald Trump’s Scandals and Insults: A Scorecard
Ironically, it is the insults that are likely to do more damage than the scandals.
By Peter Dreier / AlterNet
September 30, 2016
It is hard to keep track of all of Donald Trump's almost daily legal and personal scandals as well as the many people and groups he's insulted. For those who like keeping score, I've provided a list. Both the scandals and the insults pose liabilities for Trump’s campaign, but perhaps ironically, it is the insults that are likely to do more damage than the scandals.
Supporters of Hillary Clinton seem to believe that each Trump scandal adds to voters’ negative assessment of his fitness to be president, like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger as it rolls downhill. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. Instead, each day’s scandal seems to push the previous one out of our collective memories. There are so many of them—and the details are so complicated and bizarre—that it is hard to keep track of them. The most recent scandal involves the Trump Foundation, which, according to an investigation by the Washington Post, Trump has illegally used to avoid taxes, pay business expenses, and create the misleading impression that he’s a generous philanthropist. Each day, the Post seems to discover yet another way that Trump has misused the foundation to feather his nest. But no sooner have we started to understand the magnitude of Trump’s misdeeds with his foundation than we are confronted with another scandal—his illegal business dealings with Cuba during the U.S. embargo, which Newsweek just uncovered.
Trying to remember the scandals surrounding the Trump Foundation and Trump’s dealings with Cuba leaves us little room in our brains to recall the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against Trump for discriminating against blacks in his apartment buildings; or the illegal con job he foisted on the unwitting “students” of his bogus Trump University; or the many employees (waiters, dishwashers, and plumbers, among others) and contractors he stiffed in his business dealings by failing to pay them for services they rendered; or the several women who have charged Trump of raping them as well as many others who have accused Trump of being a sexual predator; or the many stories that have linked Trump to the mafia in his hotel and casino business activities; or his misuse of at least four business bankruptcies to avoid paying his creditors and his taxes; or Trump’s failure to pay federal income taxes despite his wealth; or his hiring of undocumented workers for one of his real estate projects and his failure, as a federal judge found, to pay them or to provide safe working conditions, as required by law; or Trump’s repeated fines for breaking rules related to his operation of his casinos; or the Federal Trade Commission’s $750,000 fine against Trump for failing to disclose his purchases of stock in two rival casino companies, which flouted the nation’s anti-trust laws; or Trump’s misuse of his $55,000 of campaign donations to purchase copies of his book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, from which he receives royalties—a violation of Federal Election Commission rules; or the foreign models who worked for Trump Model Management in this country without having proper visas and permits. And this is just a partial list!
One might think that all these scandals would lead voters to view Trump as a corrupt, irresponsible law-breaker unfit to be president. But there are so many of them that it is difficult to keep Trump’s crimes and calumnies straight. Most of us only have a big enough attention span to remember the most recent scandal.
On the other hand, most Americans have a pretty good memory for names and faces, so it is easier to remember at least some of the long list of people whom Trump has insulted, in part because we can identify with these individuals. We are all aware of Trump’s steady use of mockery, bullying and belittlement against people with whom he disagrees, who have criticized him, or whose looks or handicaps he finds troubling.
So while Clinton’s supporters might not gain much ground reminding voters about Trump’s multiple business and personal scandals, they are on firmer ground calling attention to the people who have been targets of Trump’s demeaning insults. That’s why Hillary Clinton scored big in the first debate Monday night when she brought up Trump’s history of calling women “pigs,” “slobs,” and “dogs,” and, in particular, the insults he hurled at former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, including calling her “Miss Housekeeping” and “Miss Piggy.” Unable to let Clinton’s comments pass, Trump has spent the last few days continuing his defamation of Machado for having gained weight while she was Miss Universe.
But voters might have some difficulty retrieving the specific epithets that Trump has used against people over the years. So here is a very partial list of the people he’s insulted and the words he’s used to attack them.
Khizr and Ghazala Khan: After Khizr Khan—the father of Humayun, a U.S. Army captain who was killed in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart—gave a speech at the Democratic convention condemning Trump for his comments about Muslims and pulled out a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution to asked if Trump knew about the right to equal protection, Trump struck back. Trump not only said that Khan had “viciously attacked” him but also erroneously claimed that Khan’s wife Ghazala was not allowed to speak because she was Muslim. “She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say,” Trump said on ABC News.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel: Trump attacked Curiel, a judge who is presiding over a trial brought by people who were scammed by Trump University. Trump accused Curiel of having “an absolute conflict” that should prevent him from presiding over the Trump University case because Curiel, a United States citizen who was born in Indiana to immigrants from Mexico, is “of Mexican heritage.” Trump said that Curiel could not be fair because “I’m building a wall” on the U.S.-Mexican border. At a campaign rally, Trump claimed that “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater,” despite the fact that Curiel has ruled in favor of Trump on most of his lawyer’s requests.
The Central Park Five: In 1989 five teenage men, four African Americans and one Latino, were wrongfully convicted of raping a 28-year-old white woman who was jogging in New York City. The media quickly labeled them the “Central Park Five.” As soon as they were arrested, Trump led the charge against them. He paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times, under the headline “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back The Police!” In those ads, Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.” Trump’s words were hardly subtle—he was calling for the boys to die. All five boys pleaded not guilty at the trial but despite the lack of DNA evidence linking any of them to the crime scene, the jury found all five boys guilty. The judge sentenced them to serve five to 15 years in prison. Michael Warren, a respected New York civil rights lawyer who later represented the Central Park Five, said that Trump’s ads “poisoned the minds of many people who lived in New York and who, rightfully, had a natural affinity for the victim. Notwithstanding the jurors’ assertions that they could be fair and impartial, some of them or their families, who naturally have influence, had to be affected by the inflammatory rhetoric in the ads.” In 2002, Matias Reyes, a violent serial rapist and murderer serving a life sentence, confessed to the Central Park rape, stating that he had acted by himself. When the DNA evidence was re-examined, it showed that Reyes’ semen alone was found on the rape victim’s body. That year, New York’s Supreme Court vacated the convictions against each member of the Central Park Five, whose lives had been shattered by their prison terms and who, had Trump had his way, would have been given the death sentence for a crime they did not commit.
Serge Kovaleski: At a campaign rally, Trump flailed his arms and mocked Kovaleski, a New York Times reporter who suffers from a chronic condition that limits the movement of his arms. Kovaleski had challenged Trump’s claim that after 9/11 Muslims in New Jersey had celebrated the attacks.
Megyn Kelly: After the Fox News anchor asked Trump about his many anti-women comments over the years, Trump said: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
Senator John McCain: At a candidate forum in Ohio, Trump mocked McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner in North Vietnam. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you. He’s a war hero because he was captured, OK?”
Carly Fiorina: “Look at that face!” Trump told a Rolling Stone reporter on his private plane when Fiorina, then his Republican rival for president, appeared on a television screen. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?
Pope Francis: After the pope criticized Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, Trump said that the pope’s comments were “really not very nice.” But then he went further, claiming that that the Islamic State (ISIS) wanted viewed the Vatican as its “ultimate trophy” and that the pope would “would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.”
This list doesn’t even include Trump’s wholesale insults against Muslims, Mexicans, and Jews, or his nasty and misinformed comments about rivals Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and others.
Trump has spread his insults so far and wide that there are few Americans who are unaware of his penchant for impulsive rants and invective against powerless and innocent people as well as against his competitors in business and politics.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books).
0 Replies
revelette2
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Sat 1 Oct, 2016 09:26 am
@izzythepush,
It is like the piece Bobsal just posted, there are so many business and potentially illegal financial scandals that is simply impossible to keep them all straight and in the focus of the American voters. I just hope authorities can check some these stories out and Trump be made to pay the consequences of his actions with the law. He actually should be in jail if even half of this stuff is true or at least have to pay legal fines.
I just read an interesting article which tells where the line "they're rapist" came from. It came from Ann Colter's 10th anti-immigration book titled “¡Adios, America!”
Lastly staying up all night tweeting after his nose twitching is a troubling sign. Why in the world anyone would vote for this guy for any reason I will never understand.
0 Replies
izzythepush
2
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Sat 1 Oct, 2016 10:06 am
@revelette2,
If he doesn't secure the presidency I'm sure some of his outstanding cases will be given a kick up the arse.
In the area in which I live they still are going to vote for tRump. When I point out all the news on crooked tRump they claim it is democratics who control the media committing character assassination. Like CI says there's no curing stupidity.
Trump’s campaign launched a vigorous defense of his business practices, saying he wasn’t breaking any laws but instead was helping get his business back on track.
“He’s a genius — absolute genius,” former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said on ABC’s “This Week,” saying the word over and over again. “This was a perfectly legal application of the tax code, and he would’ve been a fool not to take advantage of it.”
Quote:
Democrats quickly pounced, saying that Trump’s business record — and his lack of paying taxes — should be deeply troubling to voters.
“You’ve got the middle-class people working longer hours for low wages — they pay their taxes, they support their schools, they support their infrastructure, they support the military,” Senator Bernie Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Trump goes around and says: ‘Hey, I’m worth billions! I’m a successful businessman! And I don’t pay any taxes. But you — you make 15 bucks an hour — you pay the taxes, not me.’ ”
So Giuliani thinks Trump is an "absolute genius" because Trump was a bad business man he run his businesses into ground and then his tax man took advantage of the tax code which allowed him to write those businesses off plus allow him to get out of paying taxes for fifteen years? What tax law is going to bail us (citizens who pay taxes) out once Trump runs the country into the ground like he does his businesses'?
NEW YORK (AP) — In his years as a reality TV boss on "The Apprentice," Donald Trump repeatedly demeaned women with sexist language, according to show insiders who said he rated female contestants by the size of their breasts and talked about which ones he'd like to have sex with.
The Associated Press interviewed more than 20 people — former crew members, editors and contestants — who described crass behavior by Trump behind the scenes of the long-running hit show, in which aspiring capitalists were given tasks to perform as they competed for jobs working for him.
The staffers and contestants agreed to recount their experiences as Trump's behavior toward women has become a core issue in the presidential campaign. Interviewed separately, they gave concurring accounts of inappropriate conduct on the set.
Eight former crew members recalled that he repeatedly made lewd comments about a camerawoman he said had a nice rear, comparing her beauty to that of his daughter, Ivanka.
More at the source.
I bet it was no picnic being Trump's other daughter. For that matter I bet it was kind of creepy for Ivanka being on her dad's mind so much in a sexual way.
USA Today has broken with tradition for the first time in its 34-year history and issued a scathing editorial against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The national newspaper's editorial board, which has never taken sides in a presidential election, stopped short of endorsing Hillary Clinton but declared Mr Trump "unfit for the presidency".
"This year, one of the candidates - Republican nominee Donald Trump - is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency," the board wrote.
The newspaper outlined eight reasons to support its stance, describing Mr Trump as a "serial liar" who "traffics in prejudice" and has "coarsened the national dialogue".
It also highlighted Mrs Clinton's flaws, advising readers to vote for a third-party candidate if they cannot support her.
"Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue," it concluded.
The newspaper is hardly the first publication to revise its editorial policy in this year's race.
A string of conservative-leaning newspapers have railed against Mr Trump, including the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Arizona Republic, which backed Mrs Clinton in its first endorsement for a Democrat in 126 years.
The publication subsequently received death threats.
In an age saturated in social media and marked by an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the role of newspaper endorsements appears to be dwindling.
In fact, almost seven in 10 Americans said their local newspaper's endorsement had no impact on who they cast their ballot for in 2008, according to a Pew Research Center study.
But Keven Ann Willey, editorial page editor for the Dallas Morning News - which has endorsed Mrs Clinton - told the BBC it is because of the wealth of information online that it is more important than ever for institutions rooted in communities to stand up.
"At a time when there are so many voices, we need to speak up and do our civic responsibility to not be over-shouted," she said.
The conservative Dallas Morning News recommended Mrs Clinton for president earlier this month, backing a Democrat for the first time since 1940.
Though the editorial prompted backlash, Mrs Willey said the board felt it was the right thing to do.
"We did consider a no-recommendation," she said, "but voters have to make a choice and encouraging voters not to participate didn't seem right to us".
A recent study by economists Agustin Casas (CUNEF, Madrid), Yarine Fawaz (CEMFI, Madrid) and Andre Trindade (FGV, Rio de Janeiro) found that "surprising" endorsements can influence modern presidential elections.
The team examined betting markets, specifically the "daily trading prices of the contract 'Obama to win the election', on the same days of newspaper endorsements during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
The study found that endorsements did improve a candidate's odds of winning, particularly if they were consistent with the newspaper's style and rhetoric, but still come as a surprise to the publication's endorsement history
But recent research shows that newspapers like that Dallas Morning News, which have bucked their own history, are the type of unexpected endorsements that could make a difference.
I really wouldn't know, never watched either show. I am not too fond of reality shows except for the cooking shows and Investigative Discovery channel. Sometimes I like the Discovery channel if it is something with nature. I do like BBC animal, sea world and nature shows. But I never liked the rest of them including the Apprentice.
I don't watch it either, Alan Sugar is a bit of a dick, but he's nothing like Trump.
0 Replies
bobsal u1553115
2
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Mon 3 Oct, 2016 08:07 am
@RABEL222,
But they can be led to not vote,
0 Replies
bobsal u1553115
3
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Mon 3 Oct, 2016 08:17 am
Harry Reid: Tax write-off exposes Donald Trump as ‘billion-dollar loser’
Print
By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times - Sunday, October 2, 2016
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s massive tax write-off in the 1990s shows that he’s a “billion-dollar loser.”
“Trump is a billion-dollar loser who won’t release his taxes because they’ll expose him as a spoiled, rich brat who lost the millions he inherited from his father,” the Nevada Democrat said in a statement.
“Despite losing a billion dollars, Trump wants to reward himself with more tax breaks on inherited wealth while stiffing middle-class families who earn their paychecks with hard work,” said Mr. Reid.
He was reacting to a news report about Mr. Trump claiming a nearly $1 billion loss in 1996 that could have gotten him out of paying federal income taxes for years, buttressing claims by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton that Mr. Trump doesn’t pay taxes.
Mr. Reid has strongly baked calls for Mr. Trump to release his tax returns and questioned whether Mr. Trump pays taxes.
In 2014, he claimed to know that Republican nominee Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes. However, Mr. Romney’s tax returns showed that he paid an effective tax rate of about 14 percent.
“Trump is over-leveraged and deeply indebted to someone, but until he releases his taxes we won’t know who. The implications for America’s security are severe. The American people deserve to know who has leverage over this man who wants to be president,” the Senate minority leader said.
Mr. Reid called for the Senate to immediately pass the ‘Presidential Tax Transparency Act,” which would force all presidential candidates to release their tax returns.
A 1996 state tax return obtained by The New York Times showed Mr. Trump claiming a $916 million net operating loss. The massive deduction could have shielded him from any tax liability for up to 18 years, according to tax experts.
The report added pressure on Mr. Trump to release his tax returns, which he has refused to do because he is being audited by the IRS.
There is no legal prohibition against releasing tax records amid an audit. There also is no legal requirement that he release the returns, although every presidential candidate for the last 40 years has done so.
“Let’s step back and take stock: Senate Republicans have put party so far ahead of country, they’ve endorsed a racist, incompetent failure who managed to lose a billion dollars in a boom year,” said Mr. Reid. “Now they are helping Trump hide his tax returns and preventing the American people from knowing what individuals, businesses or foreign interests could have leverage over Trump.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's charitable foundation has been ordered by New York's attorney general to stop fundraising in the state.
Prosecutors issued a "notice of violation" after determining the foundation had no proper registration.
The notice directs the Trump foundation to "immediately cease soliciting contributions or engaging in other fundraising activities in New York".
The foundation has relied on donations from others since 2008, records show.
James Sheehan, head of the attorney general's charities bureau, sent the letter to the foundation on Friday, according to a copy provided by press office of state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
