On September 26, 2016, in the first of three debates with Hillary Clinton, Trump retorted to a claim that he paid no taxes by replying, “that makes me smart.”
Even after the election, Trump claimed he was withholding his tax returns from the public because he was under audit. However, in 2019, he sued to keep them being being obtained.
In September 2020, it was revealed that he paid a total of $750 in taxes for that year.
Trump claimed repeatedly during his campaign and into his term that Mexico would pay for a wall along the 2,000 mile border between Mexico and the United States.
Over the course of his term, Trump backtracked from his statements, claiming instead that it would be indirectly be paid for with Mexico tariffs, or through solar power generated by the wall, or other vague means.
Trump first voiced the unsound claim that vaccines cause autism during a 2007 interview with the Orlando Sun-Sentinal. Trump said his then-infant son Barron was being given vaccinations over a prolonged period of time, explaining, “When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor. And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic. Everybody has their theory. My theory, and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots.”
In a 2009 Fox News segment, Trump called to say, “I think the vaccines can be very dangerous. And, obviously, you know, a lot of people are talking about vaccines with children with respect to autism.” He reiterated the claim again in a 2012 interview with Fox News on Autism Awareness Day.
Trump has also voiced this belief via Twitter.
Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism….
During the 2015 Republican Presidential Primaries, Trump said he was supportive of vaccines, but again stated his belief that the dosages should be smaller and administered over a longer period of time.
With 16 single-sided pages and 4 colored pencils, Trump’s campaign sold coloring books depicting him as a superhero for $20.
Official Trump coloring book for $20.
Other products include a Trump puzzle, “I HEART Trump” straws, children’s Trump/Pence wood trucks and trains, infant one-pieces, wrapping paper featuring Trump’s face, and a collectable Christmas ornament in the shape of a red MAGA hat.
Trump’s official campaign merchandise received renewed attention after a Twitter user pointed out the negative effects of online shopping cart abandonment.
Go to the trump merch store.
Load up your digital cart with as much merch as you can fit.
Now instead of checking out, take a little break (or a long one) and go read about the wonderful world of digital shopping cart abandonment and it’s negative effects on available inventory
— 𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔🇺🇸 (@christophurious) June 24, 2020
In February 2016 during a Las Vegas rally, Trump mocked protesters as they were ejected, and boasted of how he would like to “punch them in the face” while reminiscing of past times when they would’ve had to be “carried out in a stretcher.”
I love the old days, you know. You what I hate, there’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches, we’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do in the old days for guys like that in a place like this? They’d be carried out in a stretcher, folks. That’s true.
You know I love our police, I really respect our police, and they’re not getting enough, they’re not, but, honestly, I hate to see that. Here’s a a guy throwing punches nasty as hell, screaming at everything else when and we’re talking, and he’s walking out and we’re not allowed, you know, the guards are very gentle with him. Like big high-fives, smiling, laughing.
Like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell ya.
Though Trump claimed multiple times that the protester in question was throwing punches of his own, there is no evidence to support it. A security officer present, who asked to remain anonymous, told Politico that Trump “was just over-exaggerating.”
That same month, Trump promised to pay the legal fees for anyone who would “knock the crap out of” protesters, which he later reneged on when a supporter assaulted a protester.
As peaceful protesters were removed from a rally in St. Louis, Missouri, candidate Trump complained about how they were being peacefully ejected, lamenting how there used to be consequences for protest.
Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick them out] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore. There used to be consequences. There are none anymore.
These people are so bad for our country. You have no idea folks, you have no idea.
The month prior, Trump promised to pay the legal fees for anyone who would “knock the crap out of” protesters, which he later reneged on when a supporter assaulted a protester.
In 2016, candidate Trump promised to pay the legal fees for anyone who would “knock the crap” out of protesters throwing tomatoes. When one of his supporters assaulted a peaceful protester, Trump backtracked, claiming he never made the promise.
If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Okay, just knock the hell – I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees, I promise. I promise.
A week prior at an Iowa rally, a protester had thrown a tomato at Trump, which missed:
Soon after Trump promised to pay legal fees, John McGraw, 78, struck nonviolent protester Rakeem Jones at a North Carolina rally.
Rakeem Jones and John McGraw. Photos by Liz Condo for The Washington Post
Immediately after, an Inside Edition reporter asked McGraw about the act. He replied,
You bet I liked it. Knocking the hell out of that big mouth. We don’t know who he is, but we know he;s not acting like an American….yes we deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him. We don’t know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization.
McGraw was charged with assault and battery, and called for Trump to own up to his word and pay his legal fees. Trump first said he “instructed my people to look into” the matter during an appearance on Meet the Press, but then later that same week on Good Morning America said,
Somebody asked me the question. And I hadn’t even seen it. So I never said I was going to pay for fees…I don’t condone violence at all. I looked and I watched and I’m going to make a decision, but I certainly don’t condone violence.
9 months after the incident, McGraw pleaded no content in court to assault and disorderly conduct charges. He was sentenced to a suspended 30-day jail sentence and a year on unsupervised probation.
McGraw shook hands with Jones in court, offering an apology which Jones accepted with an embrace.
Michael Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer for over a decade. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations and tax evasion regarding a payment of $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, with whom Trump had an affair.
Michael Cohen / Wikipedia
Expenditures in defense of a candidate’s political outcome can be considered campaign contributions, subject to laws that bar corporate donations and establish donation limits. After acting as an intermediary for the payment to Stormy Daniels, Cohen filed fake invoices to Trump’s company.
As part of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Cohen’s home and office were raided in April 2018 by the FBI. In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to 8 counts of tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. He later pleaded guilty to an additional count of lying to a Senate and House Intelligence Committees regarding the proposed Trump Hotel Moscow.
In February 2019, Cohen asserted that all he had done was at Trump’s direction. While his testimony was colored by his previous lie to Congress, Cohen claimed that he then only sought to tell the truth as he was no longer working to defend the President.
Last fall I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with Individual Number 1. And for the record, Individual Number 1 is President Donald J. Trump.
Cohen’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis, noted that Cohen had committed his felonies at the request of Trump to influence the election: “He stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”
Trump said he never directed Cohen to do anything illegal.
I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called “advice of counsel,” and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid. Despite that many campaign finance lawyers have strongly……
Rudy Giuliani, who was added to Trump’s legal team, admitted in a Fox News interview that Trump repaid the money to Cohen. However, he defended it by saying it wasn’t campaign money, and so there was no campaign finance law violation on Trump’s behalf. He also indicated that Trump was aware of the payment from the beginning, though Trump had repeatedly denied any knowledge of Stormy Daniels or the $130,000 in hush money.
It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violations…[it was] funneled through a law firm, and the President repaid it.
…everybody was nervous about this from the very beginning. I wasn’t. I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign. I said $130,000? You’re gonna do a couple checks for $130,000. When I heard Cohen’s retainer of $35,000, when he was doing no work for the President, I said that’s how he’s repaying, that’s how, how he’s repaying it. With a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael.
[Trump] didn’t know about the specifics of it.
For pleading guilty to the following counts, Cohen was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison, along with fines, asset forfeiture, and disbarment:
5 counts of tax evasion
1 count of making false statements to a financial institution
1 count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution
1 count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate or campaign
1 count of making false statements to a congressional committee
During a visit to Mexico, Pope Francis said in 2016 of Trump,
A person who thinks only about building walls, where they may be, not not building bridges, is not a Christian. This is not in the gospel. As far as what you said about whether to vote or not vote, I am not going to get involved in that. I only say that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.
In a retort, Trump said that the Pope was being manipulated by the Mexican government. He replied at a rally,
If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened.
Trump has repeatedly referred to himself as a Christian, though he was unable to recite a single verse from the Bible. He also had fairly positive views of Pope Francis upon the pope’s election.
Congratulations to my Catholic friends on the selection of Pope Francis I to lead the Catholic Church. People that know him love him!
Pope Francis’ views of Trump continued to be more mixed.
Trump visits the Pope at the Vatican, May 24, 2017. EVAN VUCCI/AFP/Getty Images
During a 2017 visit to the Vatican that was described as “stiff,” Pope Francis gifted Trump with copies of his writings, including an encyclical on climate change. Trump has derided climate change as a Chinese hoax.
Pope Francis also criticized Trump’s border and family separation policy, comparing it to the Berlin Wall.
It falls into the greatest cruelty. To defend what? The territory, or the economy of the country, or who knows what? We already know one wall, the Berlin Wall that brought us enough headaches and enough suffering…. But it seems that man does what animals do not do, doesn’t it? Man is the only animal that falls twice into the same hole.
On Trump’s move to repeal DACA, the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Pope Francis said,
The president of the United States presents himself as pro-life and if he is a good pro-lifer, he understands that family is the cradle of life and its unity must be protected.
Trump made the remark after being gifted the medal by a veteran wounded in Iraq.
The comment shed doubt on whether Trump knew what a Purple Heart was awarded for, as few wish to be injured or killed while serving in order to receive the medal.
A Purple Heart medal. Sarah Blansett / Military.com
