Alongside a Rolling Stone journalist, Trump commented on rival Carly Fiorina when she appeared on television. “Look at that face!” he exclaimed. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
2016 Republican primary candidate Carly Fiorina. Wikipedia
The comment drew outrage, as Trump had previously made disparaging remarks about women.
Schwartz elaborated, “the millions of people who voted for him and believe that he represents their interests will learn what anyone who deals closely with him already knows—that he couldn’t care less about them.”
Trump claimed at an Alabama rally that he watched thousands cheer on 9/11, ostensibly Muslims.
I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.
He later doubled down on his claim when questioned about its validity, citing a 2001 Washington Post story by Serge Kovaleski.
In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners’ plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.
Serge Kovaleski retorted that his writing of the alleged “number of people” was not the hundreds and thousands Trump claimed, nor would it be possible for Trump to have personally witnessed as much.
Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: “Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,” he’s going like “I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.”
In the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald Trump, the author wrote about divorce depositions between Donald and his first wife Ivana in which she alleged that he raped her.
Donald Trump and first wife Ivana at the Scopus Awards in 1990.
The Daily Beast summarized:
After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.
” ‘Your f[******] doctor has ruined me!’ Trump cried.
“What followed was a ‘violent assault,’ according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.
” ‘Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,’ Hurt writes. ‘According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’
“Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there ‘crying for the rest of night.’ When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.
“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’ Hurt writes.
While Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, asserted that one can’t rape their spouse, Ivana has also walked back the allegations in subsequent years. She explained, “Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
Trump made the remarks in an interview with Bill O’Reilly. When O’Reilly said that “Putin’s a killer,” Trump likened the United States to Russia and its human rights violations, replying that “there are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
During his presidential announcement speech, Trump said, “The last quarter, it was just announced, our gross domestic product — a sign of strength, right? But not for us. It was below zero. Who ever heard of this? It’s never below zero.”
While Trump was likely referring to percent change in GDP, that too has been below zero many times in the past.
Trump used an acting firm to source attendees for his presidential campaign announcement, and to clap and cheer. He paid $50 per person.
The campaign delayed payment to the acting firm until legal action was threatened.
Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager at the time, denied the claim during Trump’s presidency:
“There is nobody who believes that when Donald Trump goes somewhere he does not generate the biggest, largest, and most rambunctious crowds on the planet.”
After losing the election, Lewandowski admitted that actors had been hired:
“Michael Cohen decided that he was going to go hire one of his buddies and pay his buddy without getting any campaign approval. You know, $50 for every person to come in, to stand in Trump Tower.”
