Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump. Show all posts

Monday, August 24, 2015

The Story Behind That Viral Photo Of Donald Trump’s Crowd In Alabama

When Sydnie Shuford and her husband took their son, Jackson, to see Donald Trump’s speech at a football stadium in Mobile, Ala. on Friday, she couldn’t imagine that a photo of her family with the Republican presidential candidate would go viral.
But by Monday, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza devoted more than 500 words to “breaking down this amazing Donald Trump picture from his Alabama rally.” Thousands liked and shared it on BuzzFeed’s Facebook page. And Mediaitewrote about how it had even inspired “hilarious photoshop gold.”
In the photo, a visibly thrilled Shuford is holding her 8-month old son. Her face shows the excitement of the moment. Trump has his hands on the baby’s face. Shuford’s husband is seen snapping his own photo. Someone behind them is holding a sign that says “Thank You Lord Jesus For President Trump.”
In an email to The Daily Caller, Shuford explains what was really going on. “As Mr. Trump came by, he said, ‘What a cutie!’ and gave my son a kiss,” she recalled. “I guess my expression in the picture shows my surprise that this event actually took place. The camera caught a combination of me laughing hysterically while yelling to my husband, ‘Did you get the pic?'”
But while she may look like an ardent Trump supporter in the photo, Shuford says her family went more out of curiosity and she is open to hearing from other candidates.
“I went to see Donald Trump because I have watched his television show and I have enjoyed him for years,” she said. “My attendance didn’t have much to do with politics at this point in time. I was simply curious.”
“My husband and I enjoyed the picture, and laughed at nearly all of the photo shops and captions,” she added. “We were, however, disturbed to see the negative comments people were making in response to the newspaper stories and the picture.”
Here is Shuford’s full re-telling of the story behind the photo:
This is the story of how a young woman from Mobile Alabama, came to be in a picture that went viral.
Friday, Aug. 21 was like any other Friday. I was finishing up the work week and looking forward to the weekend. My husband and our two older daughters wanted to go the rally to see Mr. Trump’s speech. No one can argue the fact that Trump has a great brand and regardless of political affiliation, he is very entertaining.
I kept thinking of pictures one always sees of politicians kissing babies. Being a new mother, I thought how funny it would be if Donald Trump saw my son, and we could snap a picture of him giving our baby a kiss.
During the speech, I meandered my way through the crowds of people, so I could get a place on the front row. As Mr. Trump came by, he said, “What a cutie!” and gave my son a kiss. I guess my expression in the picture shows my surprise that this event actually took place. The camera caught a combination of me laughing hysterically while yelling to my husband, “Did you get the pic?” (The man on my left in the picture who is leaning back and taking a photo is my husband).
My husband and I enjoyed the picture, and laughed at nearly all of the photo shops and captions. We were however disturbed to see the negative comments people were making in response to the newspaper stories and the picture. These attacks were made against me, the collective group of people around me, the city of Mobile and the state of Alabama. “Alabamians are racist, stupid, have the lowest IQs in the country, the highest school dropout rate, etc.” I never realized until this experience how difficult it would be to hear such insults about my beloved city and state.
Here is the truth: I am a wife and mother of three, and I am employed full-time as a guidance counselor. I love my students regardless of ethnicity or affluence. I went to see Donald Trump because I have watched his television show and I have enjoyed him for years. My attendance didn’t have much to do with politics at this point in time. I was simply curious.
Mobile does not receive much attention from politicians, much less celebrities and as a member of this community I believe it is not only “southern hospitality” but good manners to show up and listen to what a candidate has to say. Furthermore, as a citizen of this great country, I feel an obligation to make informed a decision before I vote. Rest assured, I will attend speeches given by members of the other party as well.

Trump's Deportation Rhetoric Crushing to GOP


It has come to this: The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. 

To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government's size and coercive powers. 

Most of Donald Trump's normally loquacious rivals are swaggeringly eager to confront Vladimir Putin, but are too invertebrate — Lindsey Graham is an honorable exception — to voice robust disgust with Trump and the spirit of, the police measures necessary for, and the cruelties that would accompany, his policy. The policy is: "They've got to go."

"They," the approximately 11.3 million illegal immigrants (down from 12.2 million in 2007), have these attributes: 88 percent have been here at least five years. Of the 62 percent who have been here at least 10 years, about 45 percent own their own homes. 

About half have children who were born here and hence are citizens. Dara Lind of Vox reports that at least 4.5 million children who are citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.


Trump evidently plans to deport almost 10 percent of California's workers, and 13 percent of that state's K-12 students. He is, however, at his most Republican when he honors family values: He proposes to deport intact families, including children who are citizens. 

"We have to keep the families together," he says, "but they have to go." Trump would deport everyone, then "have an expedited way of getting them ["the good ones"; "when somebody is terrific"] back." Big Brother government will identify the "good" and "terrific" from among the wretched refuse of other teeming shores.

Trump proposes seizing money that illegal immigrants from Mexico try to send home. This might involve sacrificing mail privacy, but desperate times require desperate measures. 

He would vastly enlarge the federal government's enforcement apparatus, but he who praises single-payer health care systems and favors vast eminent domain powers has never made a fetish of small government.



Saturday, August 22, 2015

Laura Ingraham Explains ‘Trump Effect’

'Anchor Baby' Flap Shows Left Losing Grip

anchor babies - Google Search
“You said that you have a big heart, and that you’re not mean-spirited,” queried ABC reporter Tom Llamas. “Are you aware that the term ‘anchor baby,’ that’s an offensive term? People find that hurtful.” The target for Llamas’s pique, of course, was presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Yes, “hurtful” and “offensive.” Llamas joined ABC less than a year earlier, but he had already mastered the rudiments of progressive patois, the language of victimization. As ABC’s designated Hispanic avatar, he felt free to spell out the left’s newly revised semantic codes to the insufficiently ethnic Trump.

“You mean [anchor baby] is not politically correct, and yet everybody uses it?” said Trump defiantly. “You know what? Give me a different term.” Llamas had swung at the wrong piñata.

There was no good answer to Trump’s question. Said Llamas lamely, “the American-born childs [sic] of undocumented immigrants.” This suggestion was so foolishly cumbersome even his fellow reporters snickered. Trump scoffed, “You want me to use that? Okay. I’ll use the word ‘anchor baby.'” Game, set, match -- Trump.





Trump Change Trump Change: Voters Rate His Chances

Friday, August 21, 2015
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has captured the public’s attention for better or worse, and his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, once seen as a pipe dream, is now a topic of serious discussion. So for the near future at least, Rasmussen Reports intends to track Trump’s race for the White House in a weekly Friday feature we’re calling Trump Change.

Our latest national telephone survey finds that 57% of Likely Republican Voters now think Trump is likely to be the Republican presidential nominee next year, with 25% who say it’s Very Likely. That compares to 27% who felt a Trump nomination was likely two months ago when he formally announced his presidential bid, a finding that included just nine percent (9%) who said it was Very Likely.

At that time, Trump ran near the bottom among the 12 declared GOP candidates. Now he leads the pack of Republican hopefuls which has grown to include 17 prominent contenders.

Among all likely voters, 49% think Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee, including 17% who say it’s Very Likely. That compares to 23% and seven percent (7%) respectively in the earlier survey. Forty-eight percent (48%) now say Trump is not likely to win the nomination, with 21% who feel it is Not At All Likely.
Forty-two percent (42%) of Republican voters say Trump is unlikely to be their party’s standard-bearer next year, but that includes just 15% who say it’s Not At All Likely. That’s down from 29% who said a Trump nomination was Not At All Likely two months ago. (To see survey question wording,click here.)

Rasmussen Reports Managing Editor Fran Coombs or spokesman Leon Sculti are available for media comment on these poll results. Call 732-776-9777x205 or send e-mail 

(Want a free daily e-mail update ? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on August 19-20, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

As each Republican presidential candidate formally announced, Rasmussen Reports asked voters how likely he or she was to ultimately be the nominee. Jeb Bush was the leader with 56% of likely GOP voters saying he was likely to win the nomination, including 16% who said it was Very Likely.  But we haven’t asked that question about Bush or any of the other GOP hopefuls in recent weeks.


Voters agree with Trump on the need to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. They also believe overwhelmingly that illegal immigrants convicted of a felony in this country should be deported. Trump made both proposals in a policy paper he released last weekend that calls for getting tough on illegal immigration.
Earlier this summer, Trump took a lot of criticism from Democrats and other Republican presidential hopefuls over his candid remarks about the criminality of many illegal immigrants, but most voters agree with Trump that illegal immigration increases serious crime in this country.

The reaction to his comments also increased media coverage of the murder of a young woman in San Francisco by an illegal immigrant from Mexico who said he came to that city because it does not enforce immigration laws. Most voters now want to get tough on so-called “sanctuary cities” that refuse to enforce these laws.

We noted in a commentary last month how the media spins the illegal immigration issue, comparing the coverage of Trump’s positions with those taken by leading Democratic contender Hillary Clinton.

In the face of increasing legal questions about the safety of secrets on the private e-mail server she used as secretary of State and of a vigorous intraparty challenge from Bernie Sanders, belief that Clinton is likely to be next year's Democratic presidential nominee has dropped noticeably over the past month.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it’s free) or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.


Friday, August 21, 2015

Trump Bashes $4 Billion In IRS Refunds To Illegals

Trump Bashes $4 Billion In IRS Refunds To Illegals - Forbes
President Obama and Donald Trump see immigration differently. The President’s aggressive executive action on immigration is still being litigated, and Mr. Trump proposes action of a different kind. In the meantime, tax credits and refunds for illegal immigrants have become controversial. Mr. Trump says illegal immigrants get $4.2 billion in tax credits. He can point to a 2011 audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. It confirms that individuals who are not authorized to work in the United States were paid $4.2 billion in refundable credits.

It sounds crazy, and yet one source says Trump is the one being unfair, taking this out of context, and not counting their taxes paidBear in mind that undocumented immigrants cannot legitimately get Social Security numbers. However, they can file taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or ITIN. They are not supposed to get the Earned Income Tax Credit, but they can receive the additional child tax credit.
That, rather than Mr. Trump, is the culprit. Mr. Trump might also point out the arguably bigger flap over the illegal immigrants whose status would be legitimized under the President’s executive action. That boondoggle is arguably even bigger, involving the Earned Income Tax Credit. Yet, it is the same refundable tax credit responsible for billions in fraudulent refunds. 

The recipe goes like this. First, get a Social Security Number, then claim the Earned Income Tax Credit for the last three years. Then, wait for the IRS to send you three years of tax refunds. The gambit could apparently work even if you never paid taxes, never filed a return, and worked off the books. And the IRS says this is the way the Earned Income Tax Credit works.

Cautious IRS Commissioner Koskinen himself explained the seemingly bizarre result to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Illegal immigrants covered by the President’s amnesty deal can claim back tax credits for work they performed illegally, even if they never filed a tax return during those years. This written responsclarified the IRS chief’s earlier statements, confirming that illegals can get back taxes.

Earlier this year, Mr. Koskinen said that to claim a refund, an illegal immigrant would need to have filed past tax returns. Yet the IRS chief later corrected himself and said that they can claim the money even if they never filed tax returns in the past. According to the IRS, illegal immigrants granted amnesty and Social Security numbers can claim up to three years of back tax credits.

The IRS says a 2000 Chief Counsel Advice on this issue is correct. With the amnesty, illegal immigrants could receive tens of thousands of dollars in tax refunds. Calling the three year tax refund perk a mockery of the law, Senator Grassley noted that illegals would be able to claim billions of dollars in tax benefits.Although the President hasn’t backed down, U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry introduced the No Free Rides Act. The bill would not stop illegal immigrants from filing tax returns, but would prohibit those workers from using the Earned Income Tax Credit.

“My bill is a direct result of the (IRS) announcement,” said McHenry. “It’s very simple. If you’re not here legally, you should not be able to access the Earned Income Credit. It’s for the American taxpayers who are trying to make ends meet.” Rep. McHenry noted that even if undocumented workers were employed in the past, many may have used Social Security numbers that didn’t belong to them.
“President Obama’s immigration action giving millions of illegal immigrants Social Security numbers marked an unprecedented executive overreach,” said McHenry. “Now, we learn that these same people, whose first act on American soil was breaking our laws, might be eligible for up to $24,000 in tax credits. This is simply unacceptable. By introducing the No Free Rides Act we ensure these illegal immigrants will not receive any more benefits intended to help American families.”

Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX) has also reintroduced his No Social Security Numbers and Benefits For Illegal Aliens Act.


STONEWALLED: FEDS HIDE FISCAL DETAILS ABOUT VAST OPERATION TO RESETTLE ILLEGAL ALIEN MINORS

asylum

Illegal aliens who show up at the border have been resettled all across United States of America instead of being detained and deported, as Donald Trump recently called for in his new immigration plan.

According to data from the Justice Department obtained by Breitbart News, 96 percent of Central Americans caught illegally crossing into the country last summer are still in the United States. Now Breitbart News has learned exclusively that a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a pro-security group about the cost of this operation is being stonewalled.
In January of 2015, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), filed a FOIA request to discover the cost of accommodating the tens of thousands of illegal unaccompanied minors who came across the border encouraged by President Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty for illegal youths.
The FOIA letter made five requests of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency: that the federal agency detail (1) the costs of building of family detention centers; (2) the costs of apprehending, processing and detaining unaccompanied minors; (3) the costs transporting, transferring, removing and repatriating unaccompanied minors; (4) the costs related to ICE’s representation of government in removal procedures involving unaccompanied minors; and (5) the number of instances where objections to the return of unaccompanied minors were raised by the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The federal agency, however, refused to answer many of these questions– instead only partially answering two of the five requests. The agency provided only the costs of transporting, transferring and removing illegal minors, as well as the costs of the man-hours such tasks required. Those costs totaled $58.2 million—quadrupling ICE’s costs of $15.6 million in the year previous.
FAIR told Breitbart News that the agency did not provide clear documentation nor explanation as to how it arrived at this estimation.
FAIR asserts that, “The failure to provide most of the cost information related to the surge of [unaccompanied minors] indicates that the government has either failed to properly document those costs, or is refusing to reveal them.”
Because this FOIA request only inquired into the fiscal impact on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency– it does not at all take into account the cost incurred by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) nor the public education system. Because most of the unaccompanied minors were turned over to HHS following their apprehension, FAIR notes that HHS’ costs “for providing shelter, food, education, health care and other services, likely vastly exceed additional costs incurred by ICE.”
The flood of minors has also placed fiscal strains on our public education system. FAIR notes that, “68,541 [unaccompanied minors] were apprehended entering the U.S. Virtually all of them have been allowed to remain in the U.S., at least temporarily.”
Because federal law dictates that all children are entitled to an education regardless of their immigration status, the fiscal burden of educating these students has fallen onto our public education system.
As FAIR notes, educating 68,541 illegal immigrant children at “an average annual cost of $12,401 per child enrolled in K-12 education, the annual cost to local schools is at least $850 million. However, since virtually all of the [unaccompanied minors] are non-English proficient, the actual costs are likely substantially greater.”
The increased costs and difficulties associated with educating illegal minors from poor and developing countries has been well-documented. As Fox News Latino reported in June of this year, the border surge has left many “schools struggling with influx of unaccompanied minors.” While the federal government’s policy of releasing illegal minors into American communities imposes burdens all across our nation’s education system, it will perhaps hurt minority American students most profoundly, by straining the educational resources needed in their communities.
For instance, New York’s Hempstead School District, which is a 96 percent black and Hispanic district, had about 6,700 students dispersed amongst its 10 schools and usually receives an average of a couple hundred new students every year. “However, last summer’s enrollment skyrocketed to about 1,500 new kids – most of them undocumented immigrants.” Fox News Latino writes, “The crush of new enrollees left the district scrambling, forcing it to dip into its emergency reserves to shell out more than $6 million to hire more English as a Second Language teachers and additional staff to alleviate overcrowded classrooms. Still, it has not been enough. The average classroom in the district now has about 40 to 50 children and [as one teacher explained is] posing a safety issue… ‘You have to understand,’ [one teacher said], ‘many of the children are not even proficient in their native language, Spanish, and now we have to teach them how to speak English. That can be very difficult.’”
Deporting instead of resettling illegal immigrants would save taxpayer dollars in two ways.
First, by deterring future border crossings, it would reduce the amount of illegal immigration in the future. As FAIR explains, refusing to implement immigration law has only encouraged more illegal immigrants to unlawfully enter the United States: “In July 2015, the Government Accountability Office confirmed that President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program played a substantial role in triggering the surge of [unaccompanied minors] in 2014.”
Second, deporting rather than resettling illegal immigrants would save the costs of feeding, clothing, housing, educating, hospitalizing, and caring for illegal immigrants and their relatives. A previous study conducted by FAIR documented that illegal immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion every year. After FAIR explains that by comparison, “The estimated cost of deporting an illegal alien is $8,318. Using just the partial enumerated $58.2 million costs to ICE and the conservative $850 million estimate for education of [unaccompanied minors] resettled in the U.S., the amount of taxpayer money spent on dealing with unaccompanied minors would have paid for the removal of an additional 109,000 illegal aliens.”

[COMMENTARY] Trump's birthright stance

10 Things to Know for Tuesday
Some people believe that Donald Trump is a Democratic mole who is in the Republican presidential race to scare away voters from the GOP and torpedo otherwise-promising Republican contenders by getting them to co-sign crazy.
Those who believe that Trump is a Democrat in Republicans’ clothing will wince at the question that NBC News’ Kasie Hunt put to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker this week at the Iowa State Fair:
“Do you think birthright citizenship should be ended?”
Trump does. Supposedly. Although since the real-estate tycoon is a master manipulator who has over the years changed position on a variety of issues, no one can be sure what Trump believes about anything.
The candidate’s nearly 1,900-word policy paper on immigration suggests hitting “delete” on the 14th Amendment to ensure that the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are no longer granted citizenship at birth.
Anyone who passed eighth-grade civics will know that changing the Constitution is nearly impossible because it involves getting the support of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. Anyone who has followed the immigration debate will note the irony that many of those who consider U.S. citizenship sacred when denying it to the undocumented suddenly consider it less sacred when stripping it away from their offspring. And any lawyer who was not absent the day they taught law in law school will tell you that, if you want to pick a fight with the judicial branch, this is the wrong battle. The courts have defended birthright citizenship without fail.
Besides, conservatives always talk about how they want to protect the Constitution. So now we have to destroy the founding document in order to save it?
Trump’s immigration proposals are a hot mess that can be summed up as follows: Build a wall, enforce the law, and protect the jobs of Americans.
But who can be sure that any of this is real?
President Barack Obama promised to make immigration reform a top priority, tried to explain away record numbers of deportations by claiming that he lacked the executive power to halt them, insisted that his administration was only deporting dangerous criminals and not hardworking people looking for a better life, and pledged that thousands of women and children refugees from Central America would be treated humanely.
None of this was true. It was all one big con job intended to fool the Democratic base.
Likewise, Trump’s policy paper is a mixture of bluster, generalities and vagueness. You hear what you want to hear.
As when Trump tells Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “We’re going to keep the families together. But they have to go.”
This isn’t the same as declaring that you would forcibly remove entire families. One could do what Obama did: Deport undocumented parents, and hope their U.S.-born children follow.
Those on the right who take Trump at face value on immigration will likely be just as disappointed as those on the left who were taken in by Obama.
This brings us back to the idea of ending birthright citizenship, which is catnip to the nativist wing of the GOP.
So when NBC’s Hunt asked Walker if he wanted to jump onboard Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride, the governor said uncomfortably:
“Yeah, to me it’s about enforcing the laws in this country. And I’ve been very clear, I think you enforce the laws, and I think it’s important to send a message that we’re going to enforce the laws, no matter how people come here, we’re going to enforce the laws in this country.”
No one who has studied Walker’s multiple choice positions on whether we should give the undocumented legal status would agree that he has been “very clear” on immigration.
What is clear is that Walker and the other GOP contenders, would likely never have been dragged into the thorny debate over birthright citizenship if not for Trump. And now with his spineless “me-tooism,” Walker has disqualified himself from the race. Moderates won’t go near him, and the folks who agree with him are with Trump anyway. That’s a recipe for losing.
Republicans, beware of the Trump trap. Things are not what they seem. Every policy proposal is really a character test. And a presidential campaign is a terrible thing to waste.
Ruben Navarrette is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Trump’s Friday Rally Moved to FOOTBALL STADIUM – Tens of Thousands Expected

The Donald Trump rally in Alabama was moved to the Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Alabama. Tens of thousands of conservative supporters are expected at the rally.
ladd peebles
Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama has a seating capacity of 33,471.

With his next campaign stop being in Alabama, it’s only fitting that presidential candidate Donald Trump is going to rally up supporters in a jam-packed football stadium.
City officials have confirmed to News 5 the location for Donald Trump’s pep rally in Mobile on Friday night has been moved to Ladd-Peebles Stadium. It’s the same venue used for the Senior Bowl and University of South Alabama home games.
“It’s due to an overwhelming response,” said Kayla Farnon, spokeswoman for the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office. “More than 30,000 people have been confirmed to attend. “

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