Donald Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson either has little grasp on recent United States history, believes Americans are stupid, or simply hopes no one will call her out on being a blatant bullsh*tter.
Pierson claimed President Barack Obama led the U.S. into war in Afghanistan in a CNN interview on Saturday, an absurd reorganization of the timeline of that war.
The U.S. in 2001 invaded Afghanistan. Obama became president in 2009. In 2001, Obama was an Illinois state senator.
It's unclear what Pierson was trying to say by bringing Afghanistan into a conversation about the beginnings of the Islamic State, which can be traced to Iraq. In one of the most awkward pieces of television this presidential election has produced, Pierson's words are so jumbled it's difficult to make out a coherent argument, other than she thinks Obama and Hillary Clinton are bad.
This is the latest distortion of facts from the Trump campaign this week. Donald Trump has also been trumpeting the notion that Obama and Clinton cofounded ISIS, which is blatantly untrue.
Of course, after a few days, Trump pawned his comment off as "sarcasm."
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Hillary Clinton’s campaign is hoping to capitalize on yet another controversial proclamation from Donald Trump: That global warming is a hoax.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has said he rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and opposes most U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb fossil fuel use.
“Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and … a lot of it’s a hoax,” Trump said at a Dec. 30 campaign rally in South Carolina. “I mean, it’s a money-making industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.”
Trump’s anti-climate stance is the focus of a new short film, directed by James Cameron, that will play tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
“Not Reality TV” offers a gut-wrenching survey of the consequences of climate change, including deadly floods, rising seas, crop-killing droughts and raging wildfires.
But the video also highlights the deep divide between Trump’s agenda — including his avowal to “cancel” the Paris climate change agreement — and Clinton’s pledge to “tackle” the climate challenge and install millions of solar panels throughout the country.
Clinton, who last night became the first woman to head a major party ticket, vowed in a voiceover to transform the United States into “the world’s clean energy superpower.”
Trump dons a hard hat to show his support for U.S. coal miners at a West Virginia rally.
IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES
The five-and-a-half minute video is part of a broader effort by Democrats and Clinton supporters to make global warming a key issue among voters in the 2016 presidential race, Cameron told Mashable and other reporters on a Wednesday press call.
“It should be a much bigger issue than it is,” the climate activist said. “I think people of compassion, people of conscious really need to take this problem seriously.”
Cameron, who directed such blockbusters as Avatar and Titanic, also produced the Emmy Award-winning documentary TV series Years of Living Dangerously, which chronicles both climate change and clean energy progress in the United States and globally.
At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week, Republicans barely gave climate change a passing glance. Trump didn’t mention climate or the environment at all during his big speech, and GOP politicians who did reference the climate threat only did so when deriding Democrats.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who chairs the GOP platform committee, drew laughs from other committee members when he noted that Democrats were planning to include climate change in their party platform, Talking Points Memoreported.
"There's sections about that they call 'climate justice' — climate justice!" Barrasso said at last week’s meeting.
In Philadelphia, by contrast, climate change is taking center stage.
“This election is about climate change, the great environmental crisis facing our planet,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Monday on the first night of the DNC.
“Hillary Clinton understands that a president’s job is to worry about future generations, not the profits of the fossil fuel industry,” the Vermont senator said, noting that Trump “chooses to reject science.”
With Wednesday's video, Democrats also hope to appeal to undecided voters who — if not already turned off by Trump’s controversial stances on immigration, freedom of religion and national security — might be dissuaded by the candidate’s denial of climate science, Cameron said.
To that end, the film includes the voices of Republican, military and religious leaders warning of the threats of climate change.
“We all know that human activities are changing the atmosphere in unexpected and in unprecedented ways,” former President George H.W. Bush said in an old video clip.
“I’m a Christian; I’m a conservative in many ways. And I also believe that climate change is real,” said Andrew Farley, a pastor and academic whose wife, Katharine Hayhoe, is a prominent climate scientist.
“A thermometer is not Republican. A thermometer is not Democrat,” he added.
Cameron said the video is “partially a reach across [party] lines, and partially calling bullshit on the hypocrisy of people who know this is a serious problem and refuse to do anything about it.”
The Hollywood director and his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, made contributions to the DNC's account; that money was used to pay Mob Scene, a production company, for the film, a public relations representative told Mashable. Cameron worked with that company as a volunteer to create the film, which he made specifically for the DNC.
Those thinly veiled shots that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took at Donald Trump last month apparently had no bearing on how his company spends its money.
The social network said Thursday that it will sponsor both the Republican and the Democratic conventions this summer — providing both events with financial backing, a "Facebook Lounge" on the premises and other forms of support.
Facebook said in a statement that its involvement in the events does not mean the company is vouching for any particular candidate or party. Rather, it considers the sponsorship to be a chance to encourage its users to participate in the election.
"Facebook will support both the Republican and Democratic conventions in a similar manner and without endorsing any one candidate, issue, or political party," Facebook's vice president of U.S. public policy, Erin Egan, said in a statement.
"This support allows Facebook to facilitate an open dialogue among voters, candidates, and elected officials during the conventions, just as it has during other critical moments in the U.S. elections and in elections around the world," the statement went on.
This isn't the first time that Facebook or its tech brethren have helped fund major political events. Facebook and Google each sponsored multiple candidate debates on both sides of the aisle earlier this year and last fall.
For Facebook, the sponsorship deals fall in line with its goal of becoming a destination for discussions about real-time news — a type of conversation where rival Twitter has always had a leg up.
Facebook uses its sponsorship privileges to source questions for the candidates, encourage live-streaming and sell highly targeted real-time ads.
But not everyone is happy with the tech industry's neutral approach to the events. Liberal activist groups have been pressuring Silicon Valley to curb its involvement with the GOP, citing the vitriol and hardline stances of its presumptive nominee.
So-called "#DumpTrump" activists demonstrated outside of Google's Mountain View headquarters last week to protest its decision to livestream the Republican convention. On Thursday, the group CREDO Action ran Facebook ads targeting some 10,000 Google employees.
Murshed Zaheed, the group's political director, said CREDO is similarly opposed to Facebook's sponsorship.
“It simply isn’t possible for Facebook to financially support a Trump-led Republican convention without associating its brand with Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric,” Zaheed told Mashable in an email. “Facebook has a choice to make: Align its brand with Trump’s racist and sexist campaign or reverse course and dump Trump.”
As for Facebook's actual political contributions, the company's political action committee (PAC) has regularly donated to the campaigns of candidates of both parties in recent years, according to federal filings.
Zuckerberg himself has mostly declined to discuss his political leanings, though he did subtly criticize Trump's immigration plan during a keynote at Facebook's F8 conference in San Francisco last month. He also reportedly voiced support for the #BlackLivesMatter movement in an internal company chat room.
A disclaimer in Facebook's public policy page claims that the political views of its executives and employees do not sway the political decisions of the company as a whole.
Donald Trump claims to have "the best words." Regardless of how true that may be, he's said very, very many words throughout his primary campaign.
So the Sid Lee Collective created Trump Against Humanity, an unofficial expansion to the popular and profane Cards Against Humanity which describes itself as "a party game about a horrible person." And it uses just quotes from the business mogul himself.
The idea first came to Jeffrey Da Silva, executive creative director of Canadian ad agency Sid Lee, that Trump's many remarks would fit just a bit too well into Cards Against Humanity, the darkly humorous spin on the wholesome family card game, Apples to Apples.
So Da Silva brought it to the agency's in-house incubator for creative projects (Sid Lee Collective) who began scanning the media for Trump's oddest quotes. It didn't take long.
"We were looking for quotes that lent themselves to the most offensive, absurd, combinations that captured the same twisted sense of humor in Cards Against Humanity," Da Silva toldMashable. "But Trump did most of the legwork for us, since he can’t seem to go long without saying something ridiculous."
IMAGE: SID LEE COLLECTIVE
Like other unauthorized expansions, such as Crabs Adjust Humidity, the cards are designed to easily combine with the standard Cards Against Humanity deck, although you could play some short games with just this set.
But don't expect to make your game nights great again just yet, because it's not currently for sale, with only 100 packs sitting at the Sid Lee office in Toronto. The initial plan was to simply give them out to the first people who signed up, but the response was so yuuge that they're reconsidering their options.
"We’re not surprised at all the attention it’s received, because people seem to latch on to any Trump related story," Da Silva said.
IMAGE: SID LEE COLLECTIVE
IMAGE: SID LEE COLLECTIVE
IMAGE: SID LEE COLLECTIVE
IMAGE: SID LEE COLLECTIVE
There's currently only around 30 Trump quotes, but since Trump doesn't seem to be leaving the realm of politics anytime soon, there will always be room for more. And keep an eye out for more card games and other merchandise in response to the businessman.
Rowdy protests prior to Donald Trump's Southern California rally Thursday evening devolved into all-out rage when the GOP front-runner finished speaking to a capacity crowd at the Orange County fairgrounds.
Hundreds of protesters swarmed the streets outside the sprawling Costa Mesa venue. Some smashed the rear window of a police car, while a few jumped atop the vehicle. Protesters unsuccessfully tried to flip the car before authorities intervened. An anti-Trump crowd temporarily blocked a freeway onramp, bringing benches and chairs to sit on.
Back window has been smashed out of a Costa Mesa police cruiser. Protester: "I think Donald Trump did it!" pic.twitter.com/FTj4JoiAdN
Images and video of the protest flooded social media as "Costa Mesa," "Orange County," #TrumpOC and #TrumpRally trended on Twitter throughout the evening.
As of this writing, police are still determining the total number of people taken into custody. Authorities attempted to break up crowds along city streets throughout the night, tackling pockets as they formed.
#OCSDPIO POST Trump Rally Protest ongoing. Number of detained and arrests still being determined
It's not unusual for Trump rallies to turn violent. They have in Chicago, Wisconsin, Florida and elsewhere. And in Orange County, which is more than a third Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric lit a match. Protesters could be seen holding Mexican flags and signs that said "Build A Wall Around Trump."
Arianna Perez, 19, with the sign: "We could be peaceful & do things different, but we wouldn't get our voice heard." pic.twitter.com/xjkDOUY3et
Even before Trump took the stage in front of thousands to talk his usual fare about building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and making America great again, his supporters and detractors faced off. Punches were thrown, expletives were shouted. Authorities in riot gear and mounted police had to break up the two sides, forming a barrier between them.
Later in the evening, fighting between the pro and anti-Trump crowd picked up again, with a handful of supporters intentionally jamming their cars into protest crowds. One Trump supporter's face was bloodied after being punched.
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