Day: August 12, 2016

For Trump, Heaven Is a Boardroom and God Is Boss

Buck Banks

For the record, I do not think I am God. I believe in God. If God ever wanted an apartment in Trump Tower, I would immediately offer my best luxury suite at a very special price. I believe God is everywhere and in all of us, and I want every decision I make to reflect well on me when it’s time for me to go to that big boardroom in the sky. When I get permanently fired by the ultimate boss, I want the elevator to heaven to go up, not down.

— Donald Trump, writing in “Think Like a Billionaire.”

Clinton Paid 34% in Taxes in 2015

Buck Banks

34%

The effective tax rate Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, paid in 2015; they donated nearly 10% of their gross income to charity, the campaign said in a statement. “Hillary Clinton released her 2015 personal tax return on Friday, further pressuring Republican opponent Donald Trump, who has spurned a decades-old tradition by refusing to release any of his returns,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Trump on Withdrawal from Iraq in 2007: ‘Declare Victory and Leave’

Jon Ponder

infografix-trump-on-withdrawing-from-iraq-2007

Donald Trump has used up the last couple of news cycles repeating the ridiculous lie that Pres. Obama is the “founder of ISIS.” He also said the bloodthirsty terror group “honors” the president.

The flimsy basis of Trump’s false narrative is that U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq early in the president’s first term, and that ISIS arose to fill the power vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal.

Never mind that ISIS began as an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgency that established itself in 2003 after the Bush administration fired more than 300,000 Iraqi soldiers and sent them home jobless, with few prospects and fully armed.

Never mind that the date of the U.S. troop withdrawal was specified in the Status of Forces agreement negotiated by the Bush administration and the democratically elected government of Iraq.

And never mind that Donald Trump himself was strongly in favor of the withdrawal at the time. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Trump in March 2007 what he thought the U.S. should do, Trump replied “Declare victory and leave.”

[…]

Trump on Hillary in 2007: ‘Very, Very Brilliant’

Jon Ponder

TRUMP: Very talented, very smart. She’s a friend of mine, so I’m a little bit prejudiced. She’s a very, very capable person and I think she’ll probably be the nominee. We’ll see, but I think she’ll probably be the nominee. … I think she’s a very, very brilliant person, and as a senator in New York, she has done a great job. Everybody loves her. She just won an election with a tremendous majority and she really — she’s become very, very popular in New York. And it wasn’t easy.

– Donald Trump praising Hillary Clinton in an interview on CNN in 2007