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Trump Issues What He Says Will Be His Last Statement on Trump U Controversy

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Responding to the controversy involving his remarks about the Hispanic judge presiding over the Trump University fraud case, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump issued a lengthy statement Tuesday on Facebook.

Trump has said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not be impartial in the case because of his “Mexican heritage.” Curiel was born and raised in the United States.

In his Facebook statement, the billionaire businessman writes, “It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage. I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent.”

“The American justice system relies on fair and impartial judges,” he continues. “All judges should be held to that standard. I do not feel that one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial, but, based on the rulings that I have received in the Trump University civil case, I feel justified in questioning whether I am receiving a fair trial.”

Defending the university, Trump writes, “Throughout the litigation my attorneys have continually demonstrated that students who participated in Trump University were provided a substantive, valuable education based upon a curriculum developed by professors from Northwestern University, Columbia Business School, Stanford University and other respected institutions.”

Trump points out that after completing the real estate course, Tarla Makaeff, the original plaintiff, completed several surveys in which Trump University was given an “excellent” rating. He goes on to imply that when the attorneys for the students realized Makaeff would not be a good witness for the plaintiffs, they decided to drop her from the case.

Referring to other students involved in the lawsuit, Trump says they also completed surveys, rating the university as “excellent.”

Trump writes that when asked what Trump University could do to improve programs, one student suggested that sandwiches be brought in and the lunch break be expanded to 45 minutes. Another student suggested “more comfortable chairs.”

Continuing, Trump draws attention to the program’s “generous” policy of giving a full refund to students when requested within three days of signing up for a program, or by the end of the first day of a multi-day program, whichever came later.

Citing his position as the presumptive Republican nominee as well as a campaign that has focused on illegal immigration, Trump questions whether a fair trial is possible.

Trump concludes his post by saying, “While this lawsuit should have been dismissed, it is now scheduled for trial in November. I do not intend to comment on this matter any further. With all of the thousands of people who have given the courses such high marks and accolades, we will win this case!” (For more from the author of “Trump Issues What He Says Will Be His Last Statement on Trump U Controversy” please click HERE)

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The False Comparison of Trump to Hillary

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A lot of Republicans still upset over Donald Trump winning the nomination resort to a false equivalence between Trump and Clinton in order to justify sitting the election out or even voting for Hillary.

Take a recent example by the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru. First he lists Hillary’s manifold sins that Trump is innocent of: lying to the parents of the Benghazi victims, promising to nominate hard-left jurists to the Supreme Court, and supporting Obamas’ high-tax economics and unconstitutional amnesty of illegal aliens.

Then Ponnuru offers a catalogue of Trump’s sins Hillary hasn’t committed: mocking a reporter’s disability, indulging a preposterous conspiracy theory about Ted Cruz’s father and Lee Harvey Oswald, threatening a trade war with China, or threatening war crimes against the families of terrorists. Trump’s list presumably balances Hillary’s flaws, in order to make the point that both Trump and Hillary are equally distasteful, thus making the election a Hobson’s choice for principled conservatives.

But this comparison is false and misleading, for Trump and Clinton have had very different careers with different obligations and responsibilities.

Most obviously, Donald Trump is a private citizen who has never held public office. He is a businessman in a world where decorum and class often aren’t as important as sharp elbows and tough negotiating skills, where making a profit is more important than consistency or sparing people’s feelings. His goal is to make money, and his flamboyant life-style is our culture’s sign of his skills and success at doing so. Moreover, his flaws of personality and character, like his rude bluster and outrageous claims, are not, alas, that exceptional or different from those of millions of other private citizens, which may explain his populist appeal. And in his line of work, especially as a reality television star, such braggadocio and insensitivity may be assets. Intellectuals of more delicate sensibilities and refined manners may not like such déclassé qualities or grubby dealings, but most of them don’t live in a hard, risky world of tough negotiations and profit and loss.

Hillary Clinton is in a very different line of work from Trump’s. Her whole life has been spent as what we laughably call a public servant. In other words, she is supposed to be working not for profit or her own status and enrichment, but for the public weal. For progressives, that means striving for “social justice,” income equality, the abolition of prejudice and bigotry, the emancipation of women, the improvement of the middle class, and the salvation of the planet from the merchants of death by carbon. This is what she tells us over and over, and this is her case for why she should be president.

But while Trump’s character flaws have been assets in his profession, Hillary’s arrogant sense of entitlement, relentless money-grubbing, chronic mendacity, and obvious dislike of people other than her minions all undercut her claims to be a public servant, and help explain why she has serially failed at that role.

Of course, some presidents have shared the same flaws as Hillary, but they at least showed some restraint in exploiting their position for private gain, and at least could pretend to be a warm “people person,” as the ghastly phrase goes. Even Richard Nixon appeared on Laugh In. But Hillary has been inept at camouflaging her unseemly ambitions and even pretending to be a caring tribune of the people––in contrast, say, to Elizabeth Warren, who is just as much a hypocritical one-percenter as Hillary, but manages to come across as sincerely passionate. With Trump, however, you know exactly what you’re getting.

Finally, if a businessman like Trump fails, he reaps most of the damage. But if a “public servant” like Hillary fails, the security and interests of every single one of us are damaged, even as she advances her own political and fiscal interests as much as Trump does. Trump’s alleged shenanigans with Trump University are nothing compared to Hillary’s exploitation of her position as Secretary of State to steer money to her foundation, which is to say to herself, her husband, her daughter, her friends and political cronies, no matter the damage to America’s interests. Trump’s inconsistencies and alleged exaggerations about his net worth or charitable contributions are a dog-bites-man story compared to Hillary’s lies about Benghazi and her private email server. Nothing Trump has publicly said or done is as self-servingly despicable as Hillary’s implications that the grieving families of the four dead Americans in Benghazi are not telling the truth about her personal promise to them to “get” the obscure producer of the on-line video supposedly responsible for the attacks, when she knew that claim was untrue.

In short, Trump has been accountable to the bottom line. Hillary has been accountable to the people. Trump has succeeded in his job; Hillary has failed abysmally at hers. Making the two equally unpalatable to the principled voter is making a false equivalence between two different kinds of public life.

Perhaps Trump’s flaws would make him a bad president. But other presidents who had flaws equally distasteful––such as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, or Bill Clinton––managed to do some good things as president regardless. With Trump there’s at least a chance he could turn out to be a better president than his bluster and insults suggest. Hillary, on the other hand, has a long public record of using her position for personal gain, and putting her ambition ahead of her responsibilities to the country she supposedly serves. Her role as First Lady was marked by bungling health care reform, indulging silly fantasies of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” and allowing herself––an “I am woman hear me roar” feminist––to be publicly humiliated by her satyr husband while attacking his victims. Her tenure in the Senate lacked any substantive legislative achievements, and her stint as Secretary of State furthered Obama’s destruction of America’s global influence, power, and security from Syria to the South China Sea. It may be possible that she could experience a road-to-the-White House conversion and become a good president, but given everything we know from her 25 years of public “service,” the probability is close to zero.

With Trump, in contrast, we know that at least he won’t be as destructive to our political order as Obama has been. With Hillary the odds are much higher that she will continue Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of our country into an E.U.-like technocratic regime of smug elites whose aim is to erode individual freedom and compromise our country’s sovereignty. Worse yet, if she becomes president, she will most likely nominate two or three Supreme Court justices, creating a court that will gut the and First and Second Amendments and legitimize further the dismantling of the Constitution’s divided powers and limited executive. And don’t put your faith in the Republican Senate that confirmed Loretta Lynch to shoot down every one of Hillary’s picks, even if that means eight years of an eight-member court.

The November election is not a choice between two equally bad candidates. It’s the moment when we reject the candidate who we know, based on her long public record of corruption, lying, and grasping for power and wealth, will take us further down the road to political perdition. (For more from the author of “The False Comparison of Trump to Hillary” please click HERE)

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Trump Bashes His Own Campaign Staff on Call With Surrogates: ‘You Guys Are Sometimes Getting Stupid Information’

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump bashed his own campaign staff during a call with supporters on Monday, telling his surrogates that his staff sometimes gives them “stupid information,” according to Bloomberg Politics.

During the call, Trump ordered his surrogates to defend his attacks regarding a federal judge’s Mexican heritage according to “two supporters who were on the call and requested anonymity to share their notes with Bloomberg Politics.”

Trump has directed a series of personal attacks towards the Hispanic judge hearing the Trump University lawsuit. Trump told The Wall Street Journal that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has “an absolute conflict of interest” due to his heritage and Trump’s position that a wall should be built on the Mexican border.

According to Bloomberg Politics, during the call, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer interjected to tell Trump that she received a memo from his staff telling her not to discuss the lawsuit.

“Take that order and throw it the hell out,” Trump said before demanding to know who sent the memo. (Read more from “Trump Bashes His Own Campaign Staff on Call With Surrogates: ‘You Guys Are Sometimes Getting Stupid Information'” HERE)

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Reality: Trump on Islam

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Former NSA head Michael Hayden recently joined a chorus of Trump’s critics blasting him for offending Muslims. “The jihadist narrative is that there is undying enmity between Islam and the modern world, so when Trump says they all hate us, he’s using their narrative,” he said.

That’s true. It’s also meaningless because in this case the narrative is reality.

Jihadists do hate us. Islam has viewed the rest of the world with undying enmity for over a thousand years. Some might quibble over whether a 7th century obsession really counts as “undying”, but it’s a whole lot older than Hayden, the United States of America, our entire language and much of our civilization.

Islam divides the world into the Dar Al-Islam and the Dar Al-Harb, the House of Islam and the House of War. This is not just the jihadist narrative, it is the Islamic narrative and we would be fools to ignore it.

The White House is extremely fond of narratives. The past month featured Ben Rhodes, Obama’s foreign policy guru, taking a victory lap for successfully pushing his “narrative” on the Iran deal. Rhodes takes pride in his narratives. His media allies love narratives. But none of the narratives change the fact that Iran is moving closer to getting a nuclear bomb. Narratives don’t change reality. They’re a delusion.

Narratives only work on the people you fool. They don’t remove the underlying danger. All they do is postpone the ultimate recognition of the problem with catastrophic results.

Islamic terrorism is a reality. Erase all the narratives and the fact of its existence remains.

Instead of fighting a war against the reality of Islamic terrorism, our leaders have chosen to fight a war against reality. They don’t have a plan for defeating Islamic terrorism, but for defeating reality.
So far they have fought reality to a draw. Ten thousand Americans are dead at the hands of Islamic terrorists and Muslim migration to America has doubled. Islamic terrorists are carving out their own countries and our leaders are focused on defeating their “narratives” on social media.

Hayden repeats the familiar nonsense that recognizing reality plays into the enemy narrative. And then the only way to defeat Islamic terrorism is by refusing to recognize its existence out of fear that we might play into its narrative. But Islamic terrorism doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.

You don’t have to believe in a bomb or a bullet for it to kill you. A plane headed for your office building or a machete at your neck is not a narrative, it is reality. If we can’t tell the difference between reality and what we believe, then reality will kill us. And nothing we believe will change that.

We are not fighting a war of narratives with Islam. This is a war of bombs and bullets, planes crashing into buildings and blades digging into necks. And yet the men in charge of fighting this war remain obsessed with winning a battle of narratives inside the Muslim world. They have no plans for winning the war. Instead they are occupied with managing the intensity of the conflict, taking out the occasional terrorist leader, bombing only when a jihadist group like ISIS has become too powerful, while waiting for their moderate Muslim allies to win the war of narratives for them by discrediting the jihadists.

The narrative mistake is understandable. The left remains convinced that it can get its way through propaganda. Its record is certainly impressive. But it’s strictly a domestic record. Getting Americans to believe seven strictly irrational social justice things before breakfast is very different than convincing the members of a devout tribal society with a deep sense of history that they really don’t want to kill Americans. All that the narrative war accomplished was to show that the propagandists who convinced Americans to vote for their own exploitation have no idea how to even begin convincing Muslims to do anything. Think Again Turn Away was an embarrassment. Various outreach efforts failed miserably. American politicians devoutly apologize for any disrespect to Islam, but Muslims don’t care.

Hayden isn’t wrong that there is a narrative. But Nazism also had a narrative. Once the Nazis had power, they began acting on it and their narrative became a reality that had to be stopped by armed force. But at a deeper level he is wrong because he isn’t reciting the Islamic or even the jihadist narrative, but a deceptive narrative aimed at us in order to block recognition of the problem of Islamic terrorism.

The Islamic narrative isn’t just that we hate them. More importantly, it’s that they hate us. Muslim terrorists are not passively reacting to us. They carry a hatred that is far older than our country. That hatred is encoded in the holy books of Islam. But that hatred is only a means to an end.

Hatred is the means. Conquest is the end.

Assuming that Muslims are oppressed minorities is a profound intellectual error crippling our ability to defend ourselves. Islamic terrorism is not an anti-colonial movement, but a colonial one. ISIS and its Islamic ilk are not oppressed minorities, but oppressive majorities. Islamic terror does not react to us, as men like Hayden insist. Instead we react to Islam. And our obsession with playing into enemy narratives is a typically reactive response. Rising forces generate their own narratives. Politically defeated movements typically obsess about not making things worse by playing into the narratives that their enemies have spread about them. That is why Republicans panic over any accusation of racism. Or why the vanilla center of the pro-Israel movement winces every time Israel shoots a terrorist.

Western leaders claim to be fighting narratives, but they have no interest in actually challenging the Islamic narrative of superiority that is the root cause of this conflict. Instead they take great pains not to offend Muslims. This does not challenge the Islamic supremacist narrative, instead it affirms it.

Rather than challenging Islamic narratives, they are stuck in an Islamic narrative. They are trapped by the Muslim Brotherhood’s narrative of “Good Islamist” and “Bad Islamist” convinced that the only way to win is to appeal to the “Good Islamist” and team up with him to fight the “Bad Islamist”.

The “moderate” Muslim majority who are our only hope for stopping Islamic terrorism is an enemy narrative manufactured and distributed by an Islamic supremacist organization. When we repeat it, we distort our strategy and our thinking in ways that allow us to be manipulated and controlled.

It isn’t Trump who is playing into jihadist narratives, but Hayden and everyone who claims that recognizing Islamic terrorism plays into enemy narratives while failing to recognize that what they are saying is an enemy narrative.

The very notion that the good opinion of the enemy should constrain our military operations, our thinking and even our ability to recognize reality is an enemy narrative of unprecedented effect.

And this is the narrative that our leaders and the leaders of the world have knelt in submission to.

Narratives only have the power that we assign to them. No narrative is stronger than reality unless we believe in it. Not only have our leaders chosen to play into the enemy narrative, but they have accepted its premise as the only way to win. And so they are bound to lose until they break out of the narrative. (For more from the author of “Reality: Trump on Islam” please click HERE)

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Trump Reveals Who He Thinks Will Be the First Female President

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump revealed in a tweet Friday who he thinks will be the first female president: his daughter.

In response to another Twitter user, Trump tweeted out: “I think the first female president of the USA will be Ivanka Trump a beautiful intelligent young genuine successful lady!”

Clinton has relied heavily on the “woman card” during the Democratic primaries, often touting her campaign as historic and noting she would be America’s first female president.

Trump called her out for it in April, saying, “I think the only card she has is the women’s card. She has nothing else going. And, frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she has going is the woman’s card. And the beautiful thing is women don’t like her, OK?”

On the other hand, Trump has described daughter Ivanka as his most trusted adviser, and she was placed in the key role of executive vice president of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization. Ivanka, who gave birth to her third child in March, has been quick to defend her dad whenever accusations have been thrown his way.

Even though her father’s tweet might have just been a sweet compliment, it’s possible that Ivanka could make a run for president in the future — especially if her dad becomes the next president of the United States. (For more from the author of “Trump Reveals Who He Thinks Will Be the First Female President” please click HERE)

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Watch: Obama ‘Trips Over His Tongue’ When He Goes off Teleprompter to Bash Trump

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President Obama, lauded as one of America’s premier orators when he was elevated to the White House back in 2008, had a stuttering moment Wednesday as he was trying to trash Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“If we turn against each other based on divisions of race or religion. If-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if-if we, if we fall for, you know, a bunch of okie-doke, just because, you know it-it-uh. You know, it-it-it-it-it-it sounds funny or the tweets are provocative,” Obama said during an appearance in Elkhart, Indiana.

John S. Roberts, writing on Young Conservatives, noted that he was never impressed with Obama the orator in the first place.

“Barack Obama is usually known for being an eloquent speaker. I guess, right? That’s what people say,” Roberts wrote. “I mean, the man has used the word ‘uh’ more than anyone in recent memory.”

Roberts then called Obama’s inability to get through one sentence attacking Trump “tripping over his tongue.”

Jim Hoft wrote on Gateway Pundit, “Poor Barack. He wanted to sound more powerful. He really did! Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned. He turned into a stuttering mess.”

Others noticed the rhetorical pothole as well.

“In the past I’ve pointed out when this guy stutters he is lying. Towards the end of his economic speech he was hinting to Trump and trying to slide in a cheap shot or two but that truthful Achilles heel kicked in!” wrote BMartin1776 on Saving the Republic. (For more from the author of “Watch: Obama ‘Trips Over His Tongue’ When He Goes off Teleprompter to Bash Trump” please click HERE)

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9-Year-Old Banned From ‘Making America Great Again’

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One local Trump supporter is being banned from wearing a signature Donald Trump hat to school after it began to draw tense conversations.

Logan Autry left Powers-Ginsburg Elementary School early on Thursday because school leaders said something he was wearing is causing a safety concern on campus– his red hat.

“The vice principal came up to me and told me to take my hat off because it brings negative attention from other students. And I said no a few times and then the principal told me again and I still said no and refused,” said Logan Autry.

For three days straight the third grader wore the hat to class. But each day, more and more classmates began confronting him at recess.

“I still want to keep my hat. It’s not the hat that draws attention, it’s just my personality that the other children do not like,” said Autry. (Read more from “9-Year-Old Banned From ‘Making America Great Again'” HERE)

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Hillary’s Foreign Policy Speech: Trump Is Dangerously Unfit for Office

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Why, yes, come to think of it, this does sound like a Marco Rubio speech with a few paragraphs in support of the Iran deal tossed in. I’m sure plenty of hawkish Republicans noticed too. And I’m sure it was written with that very much in mind.

Although, given the way Rubio is going these days, he may volunteer to deliver the nationalist rebuttal at the convention.

The video is long but you’ll find a transcript here. The indictment of Trump early on is especially bruising. Here’s the dilemma for a #NeverTrumper in this election: On the one hand, everything Guy Benson says about Clinton’s own myriad foreign-policy failures in the following passage is dead on . . .

[Hillary speaking about Donald Trump:]

He is not just unprepared – he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.

This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes – because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.

(Read more from “Hillary’s Foreign Policy Speech: Trump Is Dangerously Unfit for Office” HERE)

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House Speaker Paul Ryan Makes the Trump Announcement Everyone’s Been Waiting For

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Saying he and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “have more common ground than disagreement,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., announced Thursday that he will support Trump.

In the wake of Trump winning the required number of delegates to secure the Republican nomination, Ryan, who has differed with Trump on issues such as immigration, said last month he was “not ready” to endorse Trump.

The two later met. After what was proclaimed a good meeting, the Trump campaign had indicated a formal statement supporting Trump would be forthcoming.

Ryan issued his statement supporting Trump in the form of a guest column in The Gazette, the paper serving Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis.

In the column, Ryan said the goal in the 2016 elections has been to show what Republicans are supporting, not just what they oppose. That’s why, he wrote, House Republicans have been adopting a policy agenda that represents ideas to move America forward.

“To enact these ideas, we need a Republican president willing to sign them into law. That’s why, when he sealed the nomination, I could not offer my support for Donald Trump before discussing policies and basic principles,” Ryan wrote. “As I said from the start, my goal has been to unite the party so we can win in the fall. And if we’re going to unite, it has to be over ideas.

“Donald Trump and I have talked at great length about things such as the proper role of the executive and fundamental principles such as the protection of life. The list of potential Supreme Court nominees he released after our first meeting was very encouraging.”

Ryan said “the House policy agenda” has been the main subject the two men have discussed.

“We’ve talked about how important these reforms are to saving our country. And we’ve talked about how, by focusing on issues that unite Republicans, we can work together to heal the fissures developed through the primary,” Ryan wrote.

“Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people’s lives. That’s why I’ll be voting for him this fall,” he wrote.

Ryan said support does not mean stifling dissent.

“It’s no secret that he and I have our differences. I won’t pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I’ll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement,” he wrote.

Ryan said the coming election is “not just a choice of two people, but of two visions for America. And House Republicans are helping shape that Republican vision by offering a bold policy agenda, by offering a better way ahead.”

“Donald Trump can help us make it a reality,” Ryan wrote. (For more from the author of “House Speaker Paul Ryan Makes the Trump Announcement Everyone’s Been Waiting For” please click HERE)

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Trump Announces Travel Plans to Location Where Some Tried to Ban Him

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Donald Trump has announced he will be traveling to the United Kingdom later this month in order to celebrate the grand reopening of his golf course, Turnberry, located in Ayrshire, Scotland.

According to The Washington Post, Trump will travel to the U.K. on the June 24, although he has yet to announce whether he will be meeting with foreign leaders.

Several U.K. politicians have previously gone on record condemning Trump and the tone of his campaign, with British Prime Minister David Cameron saying Trump is “stupid, divisive and wrong.”

Despite these harsh criticisms, Cameron said the U.K. would retain its “special relationship” with the U.S. even if Trump makes his way to the White House. Some might suggest this clarification was an attempt to walk back his previous statements.

In addition to Cameron, a handful of British lawmakers attempted to ban Trump’s entry into the country back in January, citing a law that outlaws hate speech.

Despite this, Trump has said he is very excited to visit Turnberry.

“Very exciting that one of the great resorts of the world, Turnberry, will be opening today after a massive $200 million investment,” Trump said in a press release issued by the resort.

“I own it and I am very proud of it. I look forward to attending the official opening of this great development on June 24,” he added.

Trump has not yet released any additional information regarding the trip, or whether he will be visiting London. The city’s newly elected mayor, Sadiq Khan, has invited Trump to the city so that he could “educate” the billionaire on Islam. (For more from the author of “Trump Announces Travel Plans to Location Where Some Tried to Ban Him” please click HERE)

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