At a rally in Kinston, NC on Friday Donald Trump ejected a protester from his rally calling him a “thug” and accusing him of being a paid agitator.

“That’s alright, leave him alone, that’s alright. You know the great thing about that, we have a protester,” Trump said as the crowd hooted and booed. “By the way, were you paid $1500 to be a thug? Where’s the protester? Where is he? Was he paid? You can get him out. Get him out.” The crowd roars its approval.

That “protester” was 63 year old Marine veteran C.J. Cary, an African-American Trump supporter who was trying to get the nominee’s attention to give him a letter asking him to have more respect for women so that he wouldn’t be beaten by Hillary Clinton.

Trump didn’t just ask to have him ejected, he intentionally used the racially loaded term “thug” to describe him. Trump referred to the largely unfounded claim that the Clinton campaign paid agitators to disrupt Trump rallies. Cary thinks he was targeted because he was the only black man in the front and he was wearing sunglasses because of a sensitivity to light.

Cary took to Twitter to defend himself and apologize for all of the “Black hate” that has somehow traumatized the GOP nominee. He told the Washington Post that he has about 100 Trump signs in his yard at the moment, and has been corresponding with Trump since 1992.

Sources:
https://www.rt.com/usa/364695-trump-black-supporter-protester/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/29/trump-booted-a-black-man-from-his-rally-and-called-him-a-thug-turns-out-he-is-a-supporter/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/10/21/trumps-claim-tying-violence-at-his-rallies-to-the-clinton-campaign/

As a weary world turns its head towards yet another investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, Donald Trump made a somewhat new accusation about a gift of $675,000 to the wife of the FBI agent involved in investigating her case.

“The Clinton crew gave more than $675,000 to the wife of the deputy director of the FBI and the man who was overseeing the investigation into Hillary’s illegal server,” Trump said yesterday in New Hampshire as his supporters booed. “But maybe that takes care of itself. Right now that takes care of itself I think, I think. Very proud that the FBI was willing to do this actually, really, very proud.”

Jill McCabe is the wife of Andrew McCabe, who was the associate deputy director of the FBI in 2015. He would go on to be involved in the investigation into Clinton’s server, but was certainly not overseeing it. That would be FBI Director Comey, who had the oversight and made the final call on whether or not to prosecute.

It was not Hillary Clinton that gave the money to Dr. McCabe’s campaign, it was Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s PAC and the Democratic Party of Virginia. $450,000 was given directly to the campaign by the PAC and over $200,000 was spent on mailings by the Democratic Party of Virginia. This all happened in the fall of 2015. That is where that $675,000 number comes from, but you may notice that neither of those organizations are Hillary Clinton.

McCabe lost her bid for the Senate in November of 2015. Her husband became deputy director of the FBI three months later in February of 2016, the first time that he had any oversight of the Clinton investigation.

Trump did amend his lie from yesterday to be “Clinton’s crew” instead of Clinton herself, as he had said in earlier comments. Trump is accusing Clinton of giving money to the wife of the person in charge of investigating her.

In reality, a PAC and the Democratic Party of Virginia, which Clinton has nothing to do with, legitimately gave money to a woman’s campaign. This was six months before Andrew McCabe was involved with the investigation. Clinton didn’t give anyone anything, and in addition it was six months before Mr. McCabe knew that he would be involved with the investigation.

Sources:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/26/donald-trump/facts-dispute-donald-trumps-claim-donation-fbi-spo/
http://nypost.com/2016/10/24/clinton-ally-gave-500k-to-wife-of-fbi-agent-on-email-probe/
Read Donald Trump’s Remarks on the Hillary Clinton Email Investigation

Donald Trump continued to dismiss the legitimacy of our 240 year old democracy yesterday, tweeting out there had been “a lot of call-ins” about so called “vote flipping” in Texas.

Apparently referring to multiple social media posts in Texas about problems with early machines, there were several reports of straight ticket Republican votes being changed to votes for Hillary Clinton.

A Potter County judge, where the Arlington incident occurred, made a statement that “there is nothing wrong with any of the machines we use for voting. They do not flip your vote. They do not flip parties. Humans do that.”

Human error was also blamed by Frank Phillips, the elections administrator for Arlington, telling CNN that “the voter did not follow the directions for straight-party voting.”

This plays into the paranoia of a GOP that can’t believe that Texas could be considered a swing state in a Presidential election. It is easier to fathom an enormous and widespread conspiracy through every facet of the election process than it is to fathom that they nominated a fantastically unlikable candidate that goes out of his way to alienate large swaths of the American electorate.

It is slightly more believable that a couple of voters in Texas were confused about how to use a voting machine than it is that thousands of people across the state have conspired to subvert democracy to give Hillary Clinton a win in Texas, a state that she almost certainly will not need to win by a large margin.

The above Facebook post, which was shared thousands  of times, also notes that the two election workers that were present were able to reset her vote and allow her to enter it correctly.

Additionally, the Texas elections board, as in 33 other states, is run by Republicans.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/27/politics/donald-trump-texas-vote-flipping/
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-voting-machines-texas-rigging-10273ab2d274#.qcuxneeac
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-election-rigging-by-gop-3bea26109db4#.4tnzj5pvw
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-25/texas-rigged-first-reports-voting-machines-switching-votes-hillary-texas

In another installment of fact checking last week’s debate, Trump made something of an off hand comment about Hillary Clinton’s State Department losing $6 billion while she was Secretary of State.

“Just like when you ran the State Department, $6 billion was missing. How do you miss $6 billion?” Trump queried.  “You ran the State department. $6 billion was either stolen, they don’t know. It’s gone. $6 billion. If you become president, this country is going to be in some mess. Believe me.”

Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/10/13/trumps-false-claim-that-clinton-lost-6-billion-at-state/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/20/donald-trump/trump-wrongly-says-6-billion-went-missing-state-de/

Donald Trump has a very low opinion of the Veterans Administration. He made the claim at the third debate, as he has many times in past speeches, that illegal immigrants are treated better than America’s military veterans.

“We have a depleted military. It has to be helped. It has to be fixed,” Trump said in his impromptu closing statement at the third debate. “We have the greatest people on Earth in our military. We don’t take care of our veterans. We take care of illegal immigrants, people that come into our country illegally better than we take care of our vets. That can’t happen.”

Trump has made this claim occasionally since the beginning of his campaign, but he has never really elaborated on what he means. In a campaign email, the Trump camp stated that there is a comprehensive immigration bill proposed in the first 100 days of Clinton Presidency, but not a veteran’s rights bill.

Trump pointed to a case where an undocumented person was convicted of a DUI but released without any immigration consequences “but members of the military who receive DUIs are subject punishment from their commanding officers and court martial.” This anecdote doesn’t really mean anything from a systemic point of view, as anecdotes similar to these could be found within any two groups of people. That is really a commentary on the arbitrary nature of our criminal justice system rather than the state of our Veterans Administration.

As far as health care is concerned, the federal government spends vastly more on the VA than on emergency care for illegal immigrants. In 2014 the federal government paid $2.2 billion in emergency care for illegal immigrants. That last year Congress passed a massive $171 billion budget for the VA.

It isn’t really reasonable to compare these two groups, as they really have nothing to do with one another. Trump uses a lot of “weasel words” like “many cases,” “worse” and “people say” in reference to this subject, without producing any evidence or even explaining what it means.

Sources:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/oct/19/fact-checks-third-presidential-debate-running-stor/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/09/13/trumps-ridiculous-claim-that-veterans-are-treated-worse-than-undocumented-immigrants/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/05/04/pelosis-perplexing-claim-that-house-bill-would-cut-va-medical-care-funds/

When Donald Trump was inevitably asked about the multiple sexual assault allegations that have surfaced since the last debate, Trump denied all charges. He claimed that the charges had been mostly proven false, before accusing Hillary Clinton and President Obama of being behind the women coming forward.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, those stories have been largely debunked. Those people, I don’t know those people. I have a feeling how they came. I believe it was her campaign that did it just like if you look at what came out today on the clips where I was wondering what happened with my rally in Chicago and other rallies where we had such violence. She’s the one and Obama that caused the violence. They hired people. They paid them $1500, and they’re on tape saying be violent, cause fights, do bad things. I would say the only way — because those stories are all totally false. I have to say that, and I didn’t even apologize to my wife who is sitting right here because I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know any of these women. I didn’t see these women. These women, the woman on the plane, the woman on the – I think they want either fame or her campaign did it. And I think it’s her campaign because what I saw what they did, which is a criminal act, by the way, where they’re telling people to go out and start fistfights and start violence — and I’ll tell you what. In particular, in Chicago, people were hurt and people could have killed in that riot. And that’s now all on tape started by her. I believe, Chris, she got these people to step forward. If it wasn’t, they get their ten minutes of fame, but they were all totally — it was all fiction. It was lies and it was fiction.

What about Trump’s assertion that these claims have largely been “debunked?”

Five of the nine women that have accused Trump have not had any part of their stories “debunked.” They are Rachel Crooks, Jill Harth, Cassandra Searles, Temple McDowell and Kristen Anderson. There is no evidence that their stories are made up, other than Trump’s fervent denials.

Trump may be referring to Jessica Leeds, the woman who accused Trump of groping her on a plane in the late 70s. A lot of credence was given to a theory that the armrests in the plane did not move like she described. They almost certainly moved. There was an eyewitness that Trump has pointed to named Anthony Gilberthorpe. He claimed Leeds was being flirtatious, not Trump. Gilberthorpe has not provided evidence to back his claims up.

Summer Zevos claimed Trump groped her on a golf course in 2005. He claimed that he never met her, and yet she still yearly send him an invite to her restaurant. Still no evidence, it is Trump’s word against hers.

While there is little physical evidence to back up the claims of the accusers, there is little evidence to back up Trump’s denials either. It is definitely a lie for Trump to claim that the accusations against him have been “largely debunked.”

Sources:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/20/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-reports-sexual-assault-him-have-/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/oct/19/fact-checks-third-presidential-debate-running-stor/

Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump about his economic plan would create jobs and growth, Trump responded with an attack on Clinton’s tax plan before launching into a diatribe about NATO and NAFTA. We never really heard how Trump’s economic plan would help the US.

But in his attack on Clinton’s tax plan, he made a pretty bold statement. “Before I start on my plan, her plan is going to raise taxes and even double your taxes,” Trump said. “Her tax plan is a disaster. And she can say all she wants about college tuition. And I’m a big proponent. We’re going to do a lot of things for college tuition but the rest the public is going to be paying for it. We will have a massive, massive tax increase under Hillary Clinton’s plan.”

Would Clinton’s tax plan possibly double anyone’s taxes?

Clinton’s tax plan does raise taxes, but almost exclusively on the wealthy. A study by Urban-Brookings found that the top 1% of tax payers (those making more than $730,000) would see their taxes increase as much as 10%. The same study found that those in the bottom 95% of tax payers (those making less than $300,000 a year) would see little change to their taxes.

The Trump campaign told Politifact that Clinton does propose a near doubling of capital gains on short term investments. Trump said Clinton is “going to raise and even double your taxes,” not just the taxes of day traders and stock brokers.

The Tax Policy Center found that the top 0.1% of taxpayers would probably see their tax rates raise from 34.4% to 41.5%. That is a raise of 21%, pretty far from the doubling that Trump threatened. It is hard to see that even a single person would trade enough short term investments to get into the top 0.1% bracket in order to see a doubling of their taxes.

Sources:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/20/donald-trump/donald-trump-predicts-hillary-clinton-will-double-/
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysis-hillary-clintons-tax-proposals/full

The question of the candidate’s respective family foundations was bound to come up at the third debate. While allegations of pay to play were lobbed at the Clinton Foundation, Trump made some pretty bold claims about his own foundation.

This exchange has been lightly edited, but the full transcript is here.

CLINTON: Well, very quickly, we at the Clinton Foundation spend 90%, 90%, of all the money that is donated on behalf of programs for people around the world and in our own country. I’m very proud of that. We have the highest rating from the watchdogs that follow foundations. And I would be happy to compare what we do with the Trump Foundation which took money from other people and bought a six-foot portrait of Donald. I mean, who does that? I mean, it just was astonishing.

TRUMP: I’d like to mention one thing. Trump Foundation, small foundation. People contribute. I contribute. The money goes, 100%, 100% goes to different charities, including a lot of military. I don’t get anything. I don’t buy boats. I don’t buy planes.

WALLACE: Wasn’t some of the money used to settle your lawsuit, sir?

TRUMP: No, we put up the American flag and that’s it. They put up the American flag. We fought for the right in Palm Beach to put up the American flag.

WALLACE: There was a penalty that was imposed by Palm Beach county —

TRUMP: There was, there was and by the way, the money went to fisher house where they build houses, the money that you’re talking about went to Fisher House where they build houses for veterans and disabled veterans.

CLINTON: Of course, there’s no way we can know whether any of that is true because he hasn’t released his tax returns. He’s the first candidate ever to run for president in the last 40-plus years who has not released his tax returns. So everything he says about charity or anything else, we can’t prove it.

Trump said that the Trump foundation was a “small foundation.” He’s right there. In comparison to the Clinton Foundation it is minuscule. According to charity watchdog Guidestar, in 2014 the Clinton Foundation raised $91,00,000 and employed 486 people. The Trump Foundation in 2014 raised $596,000 and employed zero people.

“People contribute, I contribute,” Trump said about his “small foundation.” It turns out that according to The Washington Post’s future Pulitzer winner David Fahrenthold, Trump has not contributed to his own charity since 2008.  So it’s mostly “people” that contribute, and not so much Donald. Here’s a handy graph from the Post.

“The money goes, 100%, 100% goes to different charities, including a lot of military,” Trump said of his charity. Surprisingly, it looks like 100% of revenues actually went to charitable distribution. They have no overhead, and no paid employees. However, some of those “charitable” donations are pretty suspect, bringing us to Trump’s next statement.

“I don’t get anything, I don’t buy boats, I don’t buy planes,” Trump said. Chris Wallace pressed him on this, bringing up a lawsuit against Trump’s company that was settled with Foundation funds. Essentially the Trump company was sued for erecting a flag pole that was too tall, fined by the city and then settled by making a $100,000 donation with Trump Foundation funds to Fisher House, a charity for veterans. A similar lawsuit in New York was settled with $158,000 in funds from the Trump Foundation to settle Trump’s legal problems.

Trump definitely bought a really ugly six foot portrait of himself with Trump Foundation money. Here it is, still hanging illegally in an office owned by Trump.

Perhaps most egregiously, Trump illegally donated $25,000 to the Florida Attorney General that was investigating Trump University for fraud. The case was later dropped by that same AG. Trump was caught and fined $2500 by the IRS.

And another thing, he bought himself a $12,000 Tim Tebow football helmet with charity funds.

To compare the Trump and Clinton Foundations is pretty laughable. The Clinton Foundation has raised nearly $2 billion dollars to help with AIDS medication and rebuilding Haiti. Trump has raised a tiny fraction of that, donated almost none of it himself, especially as a portion of income, and used much of the scant funds to directly benefit himself.

Sources:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-presidential-debate-fact-check
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/10/20/fact-check-trump-clinton-debate-las-vegas/92437230/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-retooled-his-charity-
to-spend-other-peoples-money/2016/09/10/da8cce64-75df-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html
https://trust.guidestar.org/notes-on-the-clinton-and-trump-foundations

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/133404773
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-used-258000-from-his-charity-to-settle-legal-problems/2016/09/20/adc88f9c-7d11-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

Donald Trump has interrupted Hillary Clinton many times in the three debates, often just loudly saying “Wrong!” into his mic while the Secretary was speaking. One of those times was when Hillary Clinton said Trump mocked a handicapped reporter.

CLINTON: So we know what he has said and what he’s done to women. But he also went after a disabled reporter, mocked and mimicked him on national television –

TRUMP: Wrong.

CLINTON: – He went after Mr. and Mrs. Khan, the parents of a young man who died serving our country, a Gold Star family, because of their religion.

A little background. Early on in Trump’s campaign he made the widely debunked assertion that Muslims in New Jersey were celebrating in the wake of September 11, 2001. Serge Kovaleski was the co-author on the origin of that urban legend, which appeared in the September 18, 2001 Washington Post. Kovaleski later walked the claim back, and denied ever saying that there were “thousands and thousands” as Trump claimed.

While discussing Trump’s mention of the 9/11 celebrations, as you can see in the video, Trump says “Now this poor guy, you’ve gotta see this guy,” before flopping around and moaning, and pointing his right wrist at a specific angle while mocking him, saying “Ahhhhh, I don’t know what I said!” Kovaleski has a genetic disease called arthrogryposis, which causes stiffness in his joints and has caused his right arm to point down in a specific way.

Let’s take a look at a comparison that a Twitter user put together.

Trump later denied mocking him as he denied knowing the reporter, saying “I have no idea who this reporter, Serge Kovaleski is, what he looks like or his level of intelligence. … Despite having one of the all-time great memories I certainly do not remember him.” Kovaleski covered Trump extensively throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the reporter saying that they were “on a first name basis” for years.

Sources:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/20/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-hillary-clinton-wrong-say-he-moc/
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-third-presidential-trump-catches-fire-not-only-for-1476929300-htmlstory.html
WATCH: Video Shows Donald Trump Mocking Disabled Reporter

As the Trump army retreats back to Trump Tower, he is setting fire to pillars of our American democracy. Trump glibly promised to “keep you in suspense” when asked if he would accept the outcome of the election, spitting in the face of 240 years of peaceful transfer of power in this country. As the inevitability of his defeat begins to sink in, Trump has been grasping at more and more outlandish conspiracies to explain to his fragile ego how he could be losing.

As his poll numbers slide, Trump has more and more been talking about voter fraud, making this claim at the debate last night. ” If you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people that are registered to vote,” Trump said. “Millions. This isn’t coming from me. This is coming from Pew report and other places. Millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote.”

It is quite rare that Trump quotes a source for his outlandish claims, so he should be commended for that. Unfortunately, he greatly misconstrues what the “Pew report” that he cites said.

Trump implied that the people “that shouldn’t be registered to vote” were committing voter fraud. In the past Trump has alleged, without evidence, that illegal immigrants are “pouring into the country so they can go and vote.” He has also alleged voter fraud in African-American “certain areas” of Philadelphia.

The millions of people mentioned in the Pew report were not committing voter fraud. They were dead. Or had moved to a different state. Or just inaccurate. The report makes no claim that there is fraud occurring, only that our current voter roles are sloppy and that they “need an upgrade.” 1.8 million people on the registrations were dead while 2.75 million had registrations in multiple states. Instances have occurred of deceased voters casting ballots, but FactCheck.org reports that essentially all of these are due to clerical errors or early ballots cast before death.

In person voter fraud is extremely rare, as we’ve said before. Trump doubled down on his campaign of misinformation at the debate as his chances spiral. Trump has incited his supporters to “keep an eye on” the polls, going so far as to illegally sign up Election Observers, prompting very real fears of voter intimidation.

Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/10/19/fact-checking-two-false-claims-by-trump-alleging-widespread-voter-fraud/
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/trumps-bogus-voter-fraud-claims/
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/factchecking-the-final-presidential-debate-2/

Click to access pewupgradingvoterregistrationpdf.pdf

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/20161018_Trump_s_voter_fraud_claims_knocked_down_by_Philly_officials.html