Chapter 1 September 2016 176 Reasons Donald Trump Shouldn't Be President Post date ¥ Tuesday, September 13 In brief, the Trump presidential campaign so far: The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who attacked the Pope. Who attacked John McCain for being captured by the North Vietnamese. Who attacked Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan and then juxtaposed their names with the phrase "Radical Islamic Terrorism." Who attacked Hillary Clinton as a "bigot." Who attacked her as "brainwashed." As "unhinged." As "a monster." As "the devil." As "the most corrupt candidate ever"-showing her face on piles of hundred-dollar bills and the Star of David. Who attacked her as someone whom "Second Amendment people" should do something about. As someone whose religion "we don't know anything about"-after he had explained he had never asked God for forgiveness. The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who attacked President Obama and implied he was a traitor. Who attacked him as having been complicit in the Orlando terrorist attack. Who attacked him for having lower approval ratings than Vladimir Putin, as if PutinÕs were real. Who attacked him as being born in another country. * Who attacked him as the founder of ISIS, then said it was sarcasm, then said it wasn't sarcasm, then attacked him again as the founder of ISIS. Who attacked Carly Fiorina for her face. Hillary Clinton for her nonpresidential "look." Heidi Cruz for her appearance. Heidi Cruz for her past depression. Megyn Kelly for having "blood coming out of her wherever." Mika Brzezinski as "very crazy and dumb," "neurotic," "not very bright," "a mess." Who attacked the women harassed by Roger Ailes. Who attacked women who choose abortion-and said they must be "punished." Who attacked a New York Times reporter because he had an illness that made his arms look atypical; who attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel because he was of Mexican descent; who attacked Senator Elizabeth Warren over allegedly lying about her heritage to get into Harvard, when she never went to Harvard. * The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and claimed they stole millions; attacked Ted CruzÕs father and claimed he helped to kill President Kennedy; attacked Bill Clinton and claimed he was a rapist. * Who attacked Mexicans as rapists, bringing drugs and crime; who attacked African Americans and claimed they were all living in poverty, with no jobs and schools that were no good; who attacked Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as a "war zone" and attacked the United States of America, claiming it is in a "death spiral." The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who lied about opposing the war in Iraq, when there is a tape of him supporting it. A tape recorded on the first anniversary of 9/11 . . . * Who lied about opposing the war in Iraq during a speech in which he insisted, "I will never lie to you." Who lied about $6 million in charitable donations to veterans' groups from his telethon; who lied about his charitable donations from The Apprentice; from The Celebrity Apprentice; from Trump: The Game; to St. Jude cancer center. Who lied about debating Bernie Sanders for charity. Who lied about why he wouldn't release his taxes because he was being audited and proved himself a liar by saying he would release his taxes if Secretary Clinton released emails; who lied about how much money his father gave him, or helped him get, coming out of college; who lied about sending his private jet to ferry stranded U.S. servicemen; who lied about talking to the attorney general of Florida about pay for play. Who lied about his business in Russia; who lied about meeting Putin; who lied about Putin's using the n-word about Barack Obama, when that n-word was actually "nuclear." Who lied about offering childcare to his employees, when it was childcare for his hotel guests; who lied about a moment of silence for the murderer of five Dallas policemen; who lied about seeing thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11; who lied about 9/11 hijackers sending their wives and girlfriends home to Saudi Arabia. Who lied about thousands of Syrian refugee terrorists being secretly admitted to this country; who lied about the Chicago police urging him to cancel a rally; who lied about the Chicago police saying they could solve crime there with "tough tactics"; who lied about how there was no drought in California, how he never said Japan should have nuclear weapons. How he opposed the ouster of Egyptian president Mubarak. How the unemployment rate is 42 percent. Who lied about ISIS making millions a week selling Libyan oil; who lied about dozens of secret terrorist cases in this country. * Who lied that a protester who tried to rush onto his stage had "ties to ISIS"; who lied about refugees entering this country carrying cell phones with "ISIS flags on them" and phone plans prepaid by ISIS! Can you hear me now? The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who congratulated himself in two tweets and a press release for predicting terrorist attacks like Orlando, while bodies still lay in the Pulse nightclub . . . Who congratulated himself after the murder of Dwyane Wade's cousin. Who congratulated himself on predicting Brexit, even though three weeks earlier he had never heard of Brexit. Who congratulated himself on Republican Convention TV ratings, even though those for his closing speech were the lowest since 2004. Who congratulated himself by disseminating a video showing how much of that speech's total running time was taken up by . . . applause. Who congratulated himself on having Òthe worldÕs best memory,Ó then three weeks later testified in a deposition that he had no memory of saying that. * The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who has proposed that Russia or China should enact a Watergate-like hacking of Hillary ClintonÕs emails; who has proposed banning Muslims from entering the country, then said it was only a suggestion, then proposed it again; who has proposed banning members of other religions; who has proposed open racial profiling; who has proposed banning people from Òterror nations,Ó saying, ÒLook it up: they have a list.Ó Who has proposed Òideological certificationsÓ for immigrants; who has proposed worse than waterboarding while praising how Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, and the Chinese government handled protest and terrorism; who has proposed that American citizens be tried by military commissions at Gitmo; who has proposed killing the families of terrorists or suspected terrorists. * A man who has proposed teaching patriotism in schools; proposed that his supporters act as vigilantes on Election Day; proposed making American protection of fellow NATO members COD; proposed purging the government of all Obama appointees. Proposed avoiding government debt by printing more money. Proposed reducing national debt by paying less than we agreed to. Proposed eliminating all financial regulations by executive order-and then, in the same speech, proposed eliminating . . . all executive orders. A man who has proposed a wall along the Mexican border to keep out undocumented immigrants; proposed mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. * Proposed a smaller wall and fewer deportations during a taped television interview that played at the same moment he was giving a speech insisting on a larger wall and more deportations. A man who has proposed immediately expelling at least two to three million undocumented immigrants, even though this would be like trying to evacuate the city of Chicago in a day; proposed immediately expelling any others not convicted but merely accused of a crime. A man who has proposed to enact all this by executive order, bypassing Congress-even though he employed undocumented immigrants in the building of Trump Tower; even though those immigrants say he not only knew of them but hired them personally; even though his own modeling agency and television shows enabled and employed undocumented immigrants; even though his own wife may have been an undocumented immigrant; even though his own grandfather was not merely a fraudulent immigrant to this country but also was denied reentry to Germany because he was a draft dodger. The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who has claimed he understood the sacrifice of a child in war because he had spent money to hire employees. * Who has claimed he understood prejudice against African Americans because the system is also rigged against him; claimed the election will be rigged against him; claimed the opinion polls are rigged against him; then praised one of the exact same polls when it favored him; claimed he would be leading those rigged polls by twenty points but for rigged media; claimed Democrats are voting ten times each; claimed that his crowd in Colorado Springs would've been larger if the fire marshal hadn't been a Democrat; claimed that his speech in Washington would have drawn more than Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, but "they wouldn't let them in." A man who has claimed he was his own best foreign policy adviser; claimed that Putin will not go into Ukraine, when he already invaded Ukraine in 2014; claimed the United States is paying rent for a military base in Saudi Arabia, when the last one there closed in 2003; claimed that to avoid hacking, the military should stop communicating "on wires" and return to using messengers. A man who has claimed that any candidate using a teleprompter should be ineligible, then himself began using a teleprompter. Who claimed that he doesn't use notes for speeches during a speech he gave primarily from notes; claimed he will fix the problems of African Americans, then the next day suggested that an African American athlete protesting police shootings should leave this country. The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who was revealed to have asked his foreign policy advisers three times in one hour why this country canÕt use nuclear weapons if we have nuclear weapons-after having asked a television interviewer the same question; who was revealed to have not known what the nuclear triad is. * A man who was revealed to have been the beneficiary of fake internet accounts underwritten by the Kremlin; revealed to have improperly sought campaign contributions from foreign nationals, including officials of foreign governments. A man who was revealed to have erased all his emails, including those sought in a lawsuit, for five years; revealed to have improperly repurposed hotel mailing lists into campaign fund-raising lists; revealed to have plagiarized twenty pages in his "Trump Institute" handbook; revealed to have employed the purported author of his wife's convention speech, which plagiarized a speech written for Michelle Obama by Hillary Clinton's speechwriter; revealed to have said on his 2008 radio show that Hillary Clinton would "make a good president." A man who was revealed to have used the pseudonyms "John Barron" and "John Miller" while pretending to be his own press spokesman and boasting of his sexual conquests in the 1980s. Revealed to have used the pseudonym "John Baron" while his company threatened his undocumented workers; revealed to have telephoned one television network to alert it to something positive being said about him on another television network. A man revealed to have millions in outstanding loans to the Bank of China; revealed to have tried to make investment deals with Muammar Qaddafi. Revealed to have once kept a book of Hitler's speeches in a cabinet near his bed. The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who has allied himself with his campaign adviser and delegate who said Hillary Clinton should be shot by firing squad for treason; who has allied himself with another campaign adviser who wants to waterboard Hillary Clinton; who has allied himself with an African American pastor who disseminated an image of Hillary Clinton in blackface; who has allied himself with his own son who follows a series of white supremacist Twitter accounts. * A man who has allied himself with at least seven campaign staffers who have disseminated racist and/or violent messages on social media; who has allied himself with a state campaign chairman who tweeted, "Lynch Loretta Lynch"; who has allied himself with an Illinois Trump delegate who is a white supremacist; a California Trump delegate who is a white nationalist leader; a former personal butler who wrote on Facebook that President Obama should be "hung for treason." A man who has allied himself with three different campaign chiefs: the first who manhandled a woman reporter, then lied about it; the second who received $12 million from a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine; the third who has been accused under oath of anti-Semitic comments and domestic violence. A man who has allied himself with a foreign policy adviser accused under oath of anti-Semitic comments; with a New York State co-chair who asked if Khizr Khan supported ISIS and was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood; with a close adviser who says a Clinton aide could be a "Saudi spy" or "terrorist agent." A man who has allied himself with a campaign state chairman accused of drawing a gun on another campaign staffer; with a conspiracy theorist radio host who claims the Newtown school shooting was an inside job; with a political operative so corrupt he was once fired-by Republicans-for falsifying evidence against Hillary Clinton. The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who has offered to pay the legal fees of any supporter who becomes physically violent against a heckler; who encouraged crowd members to harass and threaten reporters, some of whom he has called out by name and who thus needed Secret Service protection. * Who accepted a military medal from an audience member and said, "I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier"; who conducted a news conference to introduce his running mate, only to spend the first twenty-five minutes talking only about himself; whose Latino outreach director warned that Mexican immigration would put "taco trucks on every corner"-four months after the nominee commemorated Cinco de Mayo by tweeting a photo of himself eating from a taco bowl. The Republican Party has actually nominated for president a man who tweeted thanks to singer Billy Joel for dedicating a song to him, never realizing that Joel was, by doing so, mocking him; who gave a trade speech in Monessen, Pennsylvania, standing in front of a wall made out of bales of compressed garbage; who gave a television interview while seated in front of a photograph of himself wearing the same suit, shirt, and tie; who appeared, in a joint news conference with the president of Mexico, with two bobby pins visible, holding his hairdo in place. The Republican Party has actually nominated for president an irresponsible, unrealistic, naive, petulant, childish, vindictive, prejudiced, bigoted, racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, fascistic, authoritarian, insensitive, erratic, disturbed, irrational, inhuman individual named Donald John Trump. Excerpted from Trump Is F*cking Crazy: (This Is Not a Joke) by Keith Olbermann All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
