It's really astounding how glib Donald Trump is about his estrangement from honesty.
First he sends out this tweet with racist lies about crime statistics.
Then, when he's called out on the lie by none other than Bill Freakin O'Reilly(!) he has this to say:
TRUMP: Bill. Bill. Am I going to check every statistic? I get millions and millions of people @realdonaldtrump by the way.
Um, YEEEESSSS! Yes, you should be checking every statistic. Well, not every statistic, you don't need to check what Willie Mays's batting average was in 1958 (.347) but any stat you're going to put out there as fact - hell yes, you need to check that first!
And this stat doesn't even pass the initial sniff test. I'm just some guy. I'm not a criminologist or statistician or law-enforcement expert of any kind, but if you were to ask me "what percentage of white murder victims are killed by black murderers?" I wouldn't have a number for you, but I would have said "way less than half. Most people who are murdered are killed by someone of the same race." And I would have been right. You trotting out this bullshit number of 81 percent of white victims killed by black assailants would be unacceptable in a high-school term paper, let alone as a claim of fact from someone who thinks he's qualified to be President!
And what was your point, anyway? Even if you thought that this stat seemed legit somehow and were too lazy and too unconcerned with the truth to bother having your people check it before you broadcast it to your "millions and millions" of followers, what point were you trying to make?
How is it part of your campaign strategy to point out that white people get killed by black people? And again, that is, of course, not true. But even if it were? You're what, trying to get people to vote for you because black people are scary? Who are you, Lester Maddox?
Oh, and speaking of glibly telling racist lies, Trump is also now claiming that he watched Muslim Americans in Jersey City celebrating on 9/11. Now, before anyone even checked on this, everyone knew this was bullshit. Yes, there were some people in other countries who celebrated this tragedy, and fuck those people, but Muslims in America were feeling the same horror and sadness as the rest of us, mixed in with a feeling of dread knowing that their lives in the US were about to get a lot more difficult.
But when everybody and his brother pointed out that this never happened, that there were no celebrations in New Jersey on 9/11, instead of saying admitting that he might have mis-remembered having a weird dream where people were celebrating 9/11 and then suddenly he realized he wasn't wearing pants and the final exam is in five minutes!, Trump instead just insisted that of course he was right.
(source)
'"So, nobody believed me," Trump said. "Some people believed me. By the way, thousands of people believe me because they saw it."
No! No one saw it because it never happened! You are lying. You can't just make up a ridiculous story, trot it out as if it were true, have that story effortlessly debunked by numerous sources, stick to the made-up bullshit story and expect to have people believe you.
At least, you'd think not. . .
Some of Trump's most ardent supporters believed his version of events, which Trump said he witnessed on TV at the time. Bruce Engelhardt, 63 years of age, is a shopping center manager from nearby Pinkerton. "I mean, it probably did happen in some ways," Engelhardt said. "Let's face it, you look at the facts, it did happen. There's good Muslims as well as those that aim to harm America. I think those are the ones we're concerned about."
"It probably did happen in some ways." Wow. I've been rolling that sentence around in my head for like 10 minutes now, trying to figure out a way in which it makes sense. The only thing I can come up with is that this Englehardt fellow is using what we here at the Chaos Compound refer to as the John Jenkins technique. Named for an old friend of ours (not his real name) who used to say things like "my boss says I can't have a raise until I lose 20 lbs." And when we would say "John, there's no way your boss said that," he would shout "WELL HE WAS THINKING IT!"
So maybe in the mind of a Trump supporter, it makes sense to say that maybe no one was physically dancing in the streets or visibly celebrating in any way, but it's safe to assume that on the inside, they were all happy about 9/11.
Sylvana Whittaker, 52, a part-time real estate agent and homemaker from Worthington, also seemed surprised that no video existed of such celebrations.
"But they do celebrate 9/11," Whittaker said, who appears to think that there are anniversary celebrations of the attacks. "Maybe he was referring to when they do celebrate it. I know we have free speech here and we agree with that but still, why don't people apologize for that instead of all the other things they apologize for that are not offensive? It is offensive for a group of people that killed 2,000, 3,000 Americans, innocent working citizens to be celebrating that."
Seriously?
This is the mindset of a quarter of Republican primary voters? Well, probably even more, but some of them just prefer a different lunatic like Cruz or Carson. This country is in deep trouble.
Oh, and also, on the subject of trump being a racist cockhole:
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Donald Trump suggested Sunday the half-dozen white attendees at his campaign rally on Saturday may have reacted appropriately when they shoved, tackled, punched and kicked a black protester who disrupted his speech.
“Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” Trump said Sunday morning on Fox News, less than 24 hours after his campaign said it “does not condone” the physical altercation.
