At this stage, some will argue that it isn’t worth the effort to interpret Trump’s misstatements, or to point out the truth of the matter—in this case, that a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi founded isis, in 2004. At the very least, it should be obvious to everyone by now that Trump doesn’t deal in reality; he deals in mythmaking, demagoguery, and carnival barking.
.. But, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump is smarter and less myopic than he seems. Let’s assume that what he’s really focussed on isn’t winning this year’s election, a task he now realizes is beyond him, but creating a long-term Trumpian movement. A nationalistic, nativist, protectionist, and authoritarian movement that will forever be associated with him, but which also has the capacity to survive beyond him. A movement that in some ways would resemble other right-wing political parties around the world, such as France’s National Front, Austria’s Freedom Party, and the U.K. Independence Party, but which would also harken back to earlier moments in American history, such as the rise of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing movement of the eighteen-forties, and the formation, a century later, of the isolationist America First Committee, which sought a negotiated peace with Hitler.
.. for right-wing populist movements to succeed, a number of things need to be in place. For one thing, they need a narrative that mainstream political leaders, and political parties, are guilty of not merely incompetence but betrayal. The most notorious example is the “stab-in-the-back” myth, widely believed in Germany after 1918. That narrative held that the German military didn’t really lose the First World War; the soldiers were betrayed by traitorous civilian politicians who signed an armistice.
.. in withdrawing almost all U.S. troops from Iraq, helped bring about the conditions that enabled isis to seize territory and create a self-styled caliphate. (He fails to point out that the Bush Administration initiated the troop withdrawal.)
.. He certainly doesn’t sound like he’s trying to win over the soccer moms in Columbus, or the office workers in Tampa, that he needs to win the election. He sounds like he is talking to his angry base, and supplying them with an inflammatory narrative that can be trotted out for years, and decades, to come. It’s a tactic that politicians outside the United States, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jörg Haider, have used to good effect in building up far-right nationalist movements.
.. It is, of course, a staple of extremist parties of the left and right that democracy is a sham, and that elections count for nothing. And once you have delegitimized an election result, or an elected leader, you can justify all sorts of extra-electoral, and indeed anti-democratic, actions.
.. Four years from now, or eight years from now, a more disciplined and self-controlled figure could take up where he left off. If at that time the United States were facing a serious economic or national-security crisis, more Americans—conceivably even a majority of them—might be willing to accept the argument that regular politicians have failed and betrayed them, and that drastic measures are called for. Healthy democracies don’t decay overnight. They gradually rot from within, with termites like Trump undermining their foundations.
Trump escalates claim that Obama founded ISIL
And he gives Clinton credit for being the terrorist group’s co-founder.
“For him to turn around and say what he did about the president and the secretary is so bizarre. It’s reminiscent of demagogues who want to be in the press no matter what they have to say,” she said. “They make their verbal poo poo any place to get attention. And this is a tactic. This is not an accident. This is a tactic, and here we are talking about it.
.. As he often does, he pointed to the massive crowds he draws at his rallies as evidence that his support is as strong as ever. He implied that polls have failed to accurately capture that support and that “I have a whole group of people out there that people don’t even know about.”
Dozens of Republicans to urge RNC to cut off funds for Trump
The letter ticks off a series of Trump actions that they believe have “alienated millions of voters of all parties,” including, attacking Gold Star families, positive comments about violent foreign leaders and encouraging Russia to find Clinton’s lost emails.
“Those recent outrages have built on his campaign of anger and exclusion, during which he has mocked and offended millions of voters, including the disabled, women, Muslims, immigrants, and minorities,” the letter states. “He also has shown dangerous authoritarian tendencies, including threats to ban an entire religion from entering the country, order the military to break the law by torturing prisoners, kill the families of suspected terrorists, track law-abiding Muslim citizens in databases, and use executive orders to implement other illegal and unconstitutional measures.”
Trump: A True Story
Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.
For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.
The lawyers confronted the mogul with his past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was vulnerable — cornered, out-prepared and under oath.
Thirty times, they caught him.
.. Trump had misstated sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.
.. That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s falsehoods were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, in his mind, because he saw the situation more positively than others did... The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded him four Pinocchios — the maximum a statement can receive — 39 times since he announced his bid last summer. In many cases, his statements echo those in the 2007 deposition: They are specific, checkable — and wrong.Trump said he opposed the Iraq War at the start. He didn’t. He said he’d never mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. He had. Trump also said the National Football League had sent him a letter, objecting to a presidential debate that was scheduled for the same time as a football game. It hadn’t... Last week, Trump claimed that he had seen footage — taken at a top-secret location and released by the Iranian government — showing a plane unloading a large amount of cash to Iran from the U.S. government. He hadn’t. Trump later conceded he’d been mistaken — he’d seen TV news video that showed a plane during a prisoner release... O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million...The depth of that financial hole made it seem even more impressive that Trump had climbed out again. But the figure was wrong. His actual debts had been much less.
“I pointed it out to the person who wrote the book,” Trump said, meaning McIver.
“Right after she wrote the book?”
“That’s correct,” Trump said.
Then the lawyer showed Trump another book he’d written with McIver, three years later.
“In fact, I was $9 billion in debt,” Trump read aloud. A similar error, repeated. It was McIver’s fault again.
“She probably forgot,” Trump said.
“And when you read it, you didn’t correct it?”
“I didn’t see it,” Trump said.
“You didn’t see it.”
“I read it very quickly,” Trump said about a book he was credited with writing.
.. Trump’s answer here was that the truth about his wealth was — in essence — up to him to decide.“My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” Trump said. “But I try.”..In a brief statement this week, Trump said he felt the lawsuit was a success, despite his loss.
“O’Brien knows nothing about me,” Trump said. “His book was a total failure and ultimately I had great success doing what I wanted to do — costing this third rate reporter a lot of legal fees.”