“Organization Has Just One Member”: ‘Veterans For A Strong America’ Draws Scrutiny
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump hasn’t offered much in the way of policy speeches since launching his campaign, so it was of great interest this week when Team Trump announced plans for a major foreign-policy speech, delivered from a decommissioned battleship. If you’ve watched the show this week, however, you know the speech didn’t quite live up to its billing.
Right off the bat, Trump’s speech on matters of national security had very little to do with national security. There weren’t even any references to ISIS. Military Times published a report noting that the remarks “featured few new ideas for military policy or Veterans Affairs reform but plenty of promises to crack down on illegal immigration and ‘make our country great again.’”
The GOP frontrunner did, however, vow to “come out with some plans in a very short time,” which struck an odd note given that this was supposed to be a speech about Trump’s plans.
And while all of this matters – presidential candidates with vague platforms who promise to deliver a major address on foreign policy should keep that promise – it’s not the most interesting part of the story.
As it turns out, the event aboard the USS Iowa was less of a campaign speech and more of a fundraiser for a group called “Veterans for a Strong America” – an organization that Trump claims represents “hundreds of thousands of veterans.”
As best as we can tell, Veterans for a Strong America does not, however, have a sizable membership base. In fact, as Rachel noted on the show on Wednesday, the group does not appear to have any members at all.
What’s more, the organization staff itself appears to consist of just one individual: Joel Arends of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
And Joel Arends of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has quite a political background.
In the 2014 election cycle, he worked with a Republican U.S. Senate candidate who was recently convicted on election-related crimes – which the candidate blames on advice she received from Joel Arends.
Arends’ group has also been under investigation by two Arizona agencies for alleged election irregularities. Arends is also facing allegations in Texas of being involved in a super PAC scam.
And just in case that weren’t quite enough, the Associated Press published this report Wednesday:
The Internal Revenue Service revoked the nonprofit status of the veterans benefit organization that hosted and sold tickets to a foreign policy speech by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump aboard a retired U.S. battleship, The Associated Press has learned. The group’s endorsement of Trump at the event also could raise legal problems under campaign finance laws.
So, taken together, this story raises some questions that deserve answers. A political operative facing some legal scrutiny appears to be the sole official at a group, Veterans for a Strong America, which, according to the IRS, has lost its nonprofit status for failing to file tax returns. And yet, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination headlined a fundraiser for the group this week – the organization sold tickets to Trump’s event for up to $1,000 a piece – and repeated a claim about the group’s dubious membership. How did this happen, exactly?
As Rachel concluded, it now seems as if the Trump campaign “is either in on some kind of scheme with this group that is not a non-profit, or Donald Trump and his campaign got duped and taken for a ride by a guy who, you could suss out pretty easily, with literally one page of Googling and 30 spare seconds. In either instance, that is the kind of base-level failure in a presidential campaign that doesn’t bode well for the long-term viability of that candidate – just in terms of the basic functions of what it takes to run.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 18, 2015
“Ornery People R Us”: Anxiety Is Pervasive On Both Sides Of Political Spectrum
In achieving their improbable surges in presidential polling, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have profited from the same wellspring of anxiety, a deep-seated fear about the future that is rising across the land. Their answers to that anxiety are very different — as their followers are very different — but they have both tapped into an undercurrent of unease that affects a broad swath of American voters.
And that unease is well-founded. In mid-September, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its annual report on wages, poverty, and health insurance. Its findings come as no surprise: Though the official unemployment rate is down to its lowest level in seven years, the percentage of people living in poverty — around 14 percent — hasn’t budged in four years.
Equally worrisome is the stagnation in wages, which haven’t risen significantly for more than a decade. “Anyone wondering why people in this country are feeling so ornery need look no further than this report. Wages have been broadly stagnant for a dozen years, and median household income peaked in 1999,” Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group, told The Associated Press.
And ornery people are. That’s the only thing that explains Trump, who for weeks has enjoyed the top spot in GOP presidential primary polls. Full of bombast, narcissism, and blame, the real estate titan has pinned Mexican immigrants as the purveyors of all that is destructive to the American way of life. It’s astonishing how much support he’s received for his proposal to deport the estimated 11 million who are here illegally.
There’s no doubt a good portion of racism and xenophobia among the Trump crowd; they are largely voters uncomfortable with the country’s increasing diversity. But they are also anxious about a future in which the American dream is out of reach for their children and grandchildren.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Sanders, Vermont’s self-described socialist in the U.S. Senate, is giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money, attracting large crowds, and leading in New Hampshire, which holds the first presidential primary vote. His answers, at least, are not xenophobic: Among other things, he would increase taxes on the wealthy and end some longstanding trade agreements.
Sanders has long warned about income inequality, which has been growing for decades but was exacerbated by the Great Recession. Suddenly, ordinary workers saw their jobs disappear, their savings evaporate, their homes taken by the bank. Many of them have not recovered the ground they lost, and their traumas have invited fear bordering on panic.
Meanwhile, the rich have only gotten richer. The top 1 percent own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, and they hold a larger share of income than at any time since the 1920s and the Great Depression.
These trends are evident throughout the industrialized world; they’re not the fault of any single politician or ideological philosophy. According to economists, they’ve grown from a convergence of factors, including the technological revolution and the globalization of labor.
Still, the wealth gap is quite worrisome. It’s a recipe for revolution, the sort of gulf between the haves and have-nots that is characteristic of developing countries, where the ties of the civic and social fabric do not bind. It’s hard to overstate the potential for upheaval in a country such as this, where a diverse population is not held together by a single language or race or religion, but rather by the belief that opportunity is available to all. What happens when a majority of the people no longer believes that?
You’d think, then, that income inequality would dominate the campaign trail. But the subject was hardly mentioned during Wednesday’s marathon GOP presidential primary debate, where such pressing priorities as possible Secret Service code names were discussed.
That’s not good. While it’s hard to see either Trump (his bubble may already be bursting) or Sanders as a presidential nominee, the voters they represent aren’t going away. Neither is their anxiety, which could prove a disruptive force in American political and civic life.
By: Cynthia Tucker Haynes, Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007; The National Memo, September 19, 2015
“So Sad, Too Bad”: Sorry, Republicans; It’s Still Donald Trump’s World
Sorry, Republicans, but it’s still Donald Trump’s world. And sorry, Donald, but now you have to share it with Ben Carson.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Carly Fiorina won herself a big patch of political territory in Wednesday night’s marathon 11-candidate debate on CNN. But the conventionally wise have been consistently wrong about this campaign, and I wonder if voters were equally impressed with her performance.
There’s no question that Trump, the clear front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, had an off night. The blustery mogul is at his best when he can feed on the energy of a fired-up crowd, but the audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was small and consisted mostly of party insiders. They showed him very little love.
His worst moment came when he claimed, without elaboration, that if he were president he would “get along with” Vladimir Putin and somehow convince the Russian leader to support U.S. foreign policy goals. Sure, and maybe Putin will give him a pony, too. You had to wonder if Trump has given more than five minutes’ thought to relations with Moscow.
But he stuck to his guns on the issue that propelled his rise: immigration. Trump’s claim that he can somehow deport 11 million undocumented men, women and children is absurd, ridiculous, unthinkable, cruel, dishonest — pick your adjective. But it has electrified much of the Republican Party base, and I’m betting that his supporters heard him loud and clear.
Meanwhile, Jeb Bush’s attempts to go after Trump reminded me of the time when British politician Denis Healey said that being attacked by his patrician rival, Geoffrey Howe, was “like being savaged by a dead sheep.”
Bush tried gamely to land a punch, at one point demanding that Trump apologize to his wife, Columba, for the ugly things he has said about Mexican immigrants. Trump refused, and that was that. Bush is taller than Trump but for some reason could not contrive to loom over him. Mano a mano , the billionaire still seemed large and in charge.
Carson has zoomed to second place in most polls, and I think his debate performance will give him another boost. His soft-spoken, low-key approach might annoy the political cognoscenti, but voters apparently like it, perhaps because he doesn’t seem as needy or desperate as the others.
I thought his best moment was when he was talking about border security and related his recent trip to Arizona, describing simple measures in one county that had reduced illegal crossings almost to zero. Sometimes practical solutions have more impact than high-blown rhetoric.
If Fiorina wanted to convince everyone of her toughness, she succeeded. She barged in whenever she wanted, no matter who was speaking, and she icily backhanded Trump over his piggish remarks about her face. I thought she overdid the Iron Lady routine when she declared she “wouldn’t talk to [Putin] at all,” but any woman running for high office faces unfair pressure to project strength. She made this factual error: A constitutional amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states, not two-thirds.
Did she do enough to vault into the top tier of candidates alongside Trump and Carson? Maybe, but she’s starting from the low single digits. And while she nailed Trump for his sexism, I thought the extended back-and-forth over their accomplishments in business was the one exchange in which he was a clear winner. If Fiorina gets tarred as a mediocre chief executive, what qualifications does she have to run on?
As for the rest:
John Kasich was upbeat and reasonable, qualities that would definitely help him in the general election — but maybe not in the primaries.
Chris Christie was sharp and funny. His campaign probably isn’t going anywhere, but after Wednesday it still has a pulse.
Marco Rubio was stridently, alarmingly hawkish. Where doesn’t he want to use military force? And did his youth make him seem vigorous or callow? You decide.
Mike Huckabee was so apocalyptic on Iran that he must have frightened any children who happened to be watching.
Rand Paul seems to have become a libertarian again, sticking up for individual rights. And unlike the others on the stage, he spoke out for peace rather than war.
Scott Walker looked, once again, out of his depth. The party establishment once thought this guy was its savior? I expect his slide to continue.
And finally, the unctuous Ted Cruz looked and sounded as if he were trying to sell me a reverse mortgage. No thanks, senator.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 17, 2015
“The Good, The Bad, And The Donald”: Just Beneath The Spectacle Is A Very Ugly Message
Donald Trump’s political rallies are, if nothing else, an event. While you wait for the Donald to appear—and even during his off-kilter and meandering talk—you can buy snacks. On Monday evening, American Airlines Center wasn’t just a venue for Trump’s next speech: It was open for business, and attendees could grab popcorn, peanuts, nachos, and plenty of beer. This was a spectacle, and the assembled embraced it. People dressed in Trump memorabilia—including one woman in a Trump-branded dress—took selfies in front of Trump signs, and cheered in anticipation of the billionaire’s arrival.
“This is actually my first rally I’ve ever been to, period,” said George Lanier, a well-built personal trainer from nearby Carrollton, Texas. “I was like—what better way to start it off than by seeing Donald Trump, you know? He’s very exciting, it’ll be very entertaining.” Lanier liked Trump’s ideas, but he was much more drawn to the candidate’s affect and style. “I love that he’s talking in everybody else’s language. He’s not trying to be politically correct—he’s just speaking to us like how we’re talking here, or how you talk to your friends.”
We associate Trump with the Republican right wing, but this wasn’t a Tea Party rally. The crowd was diverse, or at least more diverse than you might assume. Chris Nieves was a transplant from New York City who studied at Texas Christian University and came as an undecided voter, interested in Trump as a businessman who could bring jobs and opportunity to minority communities. “He’s not a politician, and I think that’s huge for us minorities, because a lot of politicians like to exploit us,” said Nieves. “I think that he’s an independent voice, and I think that would be especially good for minorities who are in need of that, because of the establishment that has failed us.”
“I wanted to see what this was all about,” explained Lawrence Badih, a real estate agent who lives in Fort Worth but was born in Sierra Leone and immigrated to the United States. “I’ve been registered Republican for a long time, and we need a change. I see Trump is rising in the polls—he’s No. 1. He’s saying things that no one else wants to say—they’re being politically correct.”
For all the Trump-curious voters, however, there were just as many Trump supporters, who were clear-eyed and enthusiastic about their candidate. “We absolutely love Donald Trump, and we are supporting him 1,000 percent,” said Marilu Rumfolo, a retired investment banker who came all the way from Spring, near Houston. Rumfolo thinks Trump will be a strong conservative on immigration. “He hit a home run with immigration,” she said. “People who just walk in and take our country by force, they really don’t have the same values. We want immigrants, but we have to make sure the law is followed.”
She also thinks Trump will be a less divisive leader than President Obama. “I don’t feel like he’s going to create that kind of animosity that we see with Black Lives Matter,” she explained. “Because honest to God, all lives matter, and it’s really an insult to see a person working 40 to 60 hours a week and be told, even if they’ve struggled their whole life, that if they’re white, ‘Your struggle doesn’t count because your skin color isn’t a certain way.’ ”
At 30 minutes after its scheduled time, the event began. An estimated 16,000 people were packed in the center waving American flags and signs for Trump. First onstage: A megachurch pastor who thanked God for Trump’s “selfless public service.” Then, a local Tea Party activist who railed against Republican leaders—citing the Mississippi Senate primary where incumbent Thad Cochran worked with Democrats to beat his challenger, Chris McDaniel—and declared her belief that, with Trump on the ballot, “2016 may be more historic than the election of Barack Obama.” (At that, the crowd went wild.) Finally, Trump sauntered on stage to whoops, hollers, and cheers.
Trump gave the usual. He gestured toward policies and issues (the Iran Deal, China, Mexico); attacked his opponents (“Jeb Bush,” he said to boos, before mentioning Hillary Clinton to even louder ones); praised himself (he was leading the polls, unlike everyone else, he didn’t need the “blood money” of rich people, and if elected president, he was going to win so much “your head will spin”); and leaned in to his anti-immigrant rhetoric. “Many of these gang members are illegal immigrants,” he said to huge cheers. “They’re rough dudes.” He complained about trade with Japan—“They send us millions of cars. Millions. We send them beef. They don’t even want it.”—and promised to make a deal that will force Mexico to “build that wall.” After more than an hour of speaking, he concluded with his slogan: “You’re going to say to your children, and you’re going to say to anybody else, that we were part of a movement to take back our country. … And we will make America great again.”
At this point, the speakers blared with “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and the crowd filed outside in the glow of Trump’s unabashed nationalism. There, in the plaza outside the center, they were met by demonstrators from the League of United Latin American Citizens. Carrying Mexican and American flags, they protested Trump’s presence and his message. “No more Trump,” chanted a group of activists wearing shirts that said “Latinos Stand Up” on the front and “Fuck Donald Trump” on the back. “We want them to know we’re united,” said Maira Medina, a manager at a local restaurant who was holding an anti-Trump sign. “If this state is going to be united, we have to unite with everybody and put the hatred and derogatory terms aside.”
Most of the Trump rally’s attendees walked by without incident. But some couldn’t resist a confrontation. “Deport illegals! No more illegals!” yelled one older woman who got into a shouting match with a group of protesters. A bald, bearded young man—wearing a T-shirt with the words “Commies aren’t cool”—almost got into a fight with one of the demonstrators before police officers separated the two. And another young man—this one wearing a navy blazer, a pink patterned bow tie, and a pair of gray dress pants—was surrounded by media and bystanders as he argued with a young Mexican American man about “illegals.”
Trump is a sideshow, and in the presence of his personality, it’s easy to overlook the ugliness behind his campaign. But it’s there, a debased successor to the nationalist white resentment of Pat Buchanan and George Wallace. And although spectators may miss it, it’s more than clear for the targets of his xenophobia, and the people who hate them.
By: Jamelle Bouie, Slate, September 15, 2015
“Donald Trump’s Fans Only Hear What They Want To Hear”: They Don’t Hear The Policy Nuance, They Hear The Bluster
In a sea of signs protesting President Obama’s nuclear deal on Wednesday, there was one that literally towered above the rest: It loomed 12 feet over the crowd, with TRUMP in huge letters blazoned across a red background. The biggest. The best. An instant media sensation.
“He will confront these people,” said Ed Hunter, a 50-year-old contractor from Maryland who was holding one end of the giant sign, which he ordered off the Internet for $100. “He will not back down. He will not enable little special interest groups. He’s not afraid of anybody.” It was a popular sentiment among the several hundred who’d amassed for the Capitol Hill protest organized by Sen. Ted Cruz to protest the Iran deal. Trump may have staked out one of the most liberal positions on the Iran deal within the 2016 GOP field, and he may even have inadvertently helped the deal happen, but his fans don’t hear the policy nuance—they hear the bluster.
As the rally kicked off, cameramen and photographers and reporters kept coming up to Hunter and his sign-holding partner, Jim McDonald, a 70-year-old retired lawyer from Fairfax. Young men and women posed for photos under the giant sign, grinning broadly despite the sweltering heat. At first, Hunter and McDonald had their backs to the stage, so the Capitol dome would frame the backdrop of supporters’ photos. But before Trump followed Cruz to the stage, they turned it around so that The Donald could see his own name hoisted above the crowd. “I’ve been making lots of wonderful deals, great deals, that’s what I do. Never, ever in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran,” Trump told the cheering crowd, standing in front of a Capitol dome that he described as full of “very, very stupid people.”
Cruz, who has promised to “rip up and rescind” the Iran deal, could easily have attacked Trump for being soft on the issue. In August, Trump said that he would enforce the Iran deal if it’s in place when he takes office. “I’ve heard a lot of people say, ‘We’re going to rip up the deal,’” the real-estate mogul told NBC News. “It’s very tough to do when you say, ‘Rip up a deal.'” Instead, Trump said he’d take a hardline approach to enforcing it. “I would police that contract so tough that they don’t have a chance. As bad as that contract is, I will be so tough on that contract.” The only other GOP candidate who’s been as moderate on the issue is Jeb Bush.
But rather than go after Trump, Cruz—who’s only polling around 7 percent nationally—is trying to ride his coattails instead, making him a special guest on Wednesday. Trump, meanwhile, reaped the rewards of Republican outrage over the deal by sharing a stage with the likes of Cruz, who riled up the crowd by accusing Democrats of financing murderous jihad: “You bear direct responsibility for the murders carried out with the dollars you have given them. You cannot wash your hands of that blood.” When Trump took the stage, he didn’t need to mention blood. He could just talk about #winning. “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning,” he told the cheering crowd.
In the lead-up to Wednesday’s rally, Trump had been moving right on the issue, writing in USA Today that he “will renegotiate with Iran” when he’s elected president. While that’s extraordinarily unlikely, it’s still completely in character for Trump: Somehow, by the sheer force of his personality, Trump will Get Things Done to Make America Great Again. At the rally, Trump promised that he will get things done with Iran before he assumes the presidency. “If I win the presidency, I guarantee you that those four prisoners are back in our country before I ever take office,” he told the crowd, referring to Americans currently detained in Iran.
Since Trump’s entire campaign is based on braggadacio—the swaggering response to anger, frustration, and resentment—his fans don’t tend to parse his policy positions very closely. In fact, gathering from those I spoke with, they tend not to even believe that Trump means it when he sounds a more moderate note. Howard Glickman, a 52-year-old Trump supporter from Philadelphia, waved away the idea that his man would be soft on Iran deal. “He’d enforce it in his way. No bull. Go in and check. Go in and do things,” he told me, echoing Trump’s own blunt vernacular. Glickman’s 26-year-old son Josh believes that Trump would go to even greater lengths to push back against Iran. “He would either write a new deal, or go to war,” said Josh Glickman, wearing a Trump shirt and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hat, with an Israeli flag draped over his shoulders.
The truth is that Trump has arguably made it easier for Obama’s deal to move forward, as The Atlantic‘s Peter Beinart writes. His candidacy has thrust issues like illegal immigration to the forefront of the debate, taking conservatives’ focus off the Iran deal at the very moment that the White House was working to convince wavering Democrats to support it. Inside the Capitol, while Cruz was imploring protesters to “Stop this deal!”, Obama had already secured the 41 Democratic votes necessary to assure its passage.
Despite Republican promises, there’s little room for the next president to come up with an alternative agreement: While Congress could vote to reimpose sanctions on Iran, they would have minimal impact without the cooperation of China, Russia, and Europe, who would be extremely unlikely to go along once Obama’s deal is already in place. So Trump’s new vow to make an alternative deal magically appear isn’t any more implausible than the promises made by the rest of the Republican field on Iran.
Jay Smith, an 80-year-old from Baltimore who has a party supplies business, isn’t particularly concerned about all that. When I recounted Trump’s moderate remarks from August to him, Smith said he simply doesn’t believe that Trump would ever enforce the president’s deal. “I don’t accept what you’re saying,” said Smith, a fan of Trump who’s undecided about the 2016 race. “Every time he speaks, he says it’s the worst deal in the world.”
Suzy Khimm, Senior Editor, The New Republic, September 10, 2015
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