Donald Trump

Donal Trump is a candidate for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. He announced his candidacy on June 16 and has not yet had to disclose his political donors. in his kickoff speech, Trump claimed he was worth 8.7 billion dollars. [[1]]

"I'm really rich," Trump said, adding that his confident attitude is what the country needs after having "losers" run the country.[[2]]

On Immigration

During his 2016 Presidential campaign annoucement, Trump said of Mexican immigrants "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting." [[3]]

The comment led to an outcry by the Mexican community and has dominated the media's coverage of Trump's campaign thus far. But as Jeff Cohen, founder of the media watchdog group FAIR, points out in his column "Memo to Media: Ask Trump If He’s a ‘Serial Racist’" the mainstream media has not asked Trump about his history of racist statements. Cohen points out that in 1989 when a white, female investment banker was viciously raped and nearly murdered while jogging in Central Park, Trump took out a full page add advocating for the execution of those accused of the crime, five Black and Latino youths, aged 14 to 16, who turned out to be innocent. Cohen points to this incident as showing of Trump's previous history of racial intolerance writing, "A question journalists might pose to candidate Trump today, especially when he’s discussing the issue of rape: “Mr. Trump, are you a serial racist?”[[4]]

In 2011, FAIR ran a piece called "Ignoring Trump’s Record of Racism" again pointing to Trump's history of racist statements, writing "Salon‘s Justin Elliot traced Trump’s racism back to the 1970s, when the Justice Department repeatedly alleged racial discrimination by Trump Management Company, where Trump served as president. According to a New York Times report (10/16/73) about the federal case: 'The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals “because of race and color.” It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.'” (See New York Times, 10/16/83.)[[5]]

On Climate Change

Trump has denied the existence of climate change dismissing it as simply bad weather. [[6]]

“The real climate change is going to be nuclear climate change if we’re not smart and tough and very, very careful because that’s a big danger and that’s a real danger,” Trump said. “I think Obama just said that the biggest threat that we have on the planet today is climate change, and a lot of people are saying, did he really say that? We have people chopping off heads and he’s talking about climate change. I call it weather. I call it weather. You know, the weather changes.” [[7]]

“You look back and they were calling it global cooling and global warming and global everything, but if you look back and the biggest tornados were in the 1890s, the biggest hurricanes were in the 1860s and 1870s. It’s weather. You’re going to have bad weather. So often I watch the evening newscasts and every time there is a rainstorm some place, and then they wonder why they don’t do well, they say, ‘It’s raining here and it’s raining there,’ usually leading the program. I call it weather. Maybe there’s a little bit of change, I don’t happen to believe it’s manmade.” [[8]]

The Global cooling school of thought was only supported by a minority of scientists in the 1960s and 1970s while then, as now, a majority of scientists believed that the earth was warming. [[9]]

Ratings from Interest Groups

Click the link to see ratings: [[10]]