I have to give you credit, you campaigning hard to the 25 readers on GNI.  Well, I guess every vote counts!!

Trump on Lewandowski firing: 'Time for a different kind of campaign'

Donald Trump speaks during his interview with Bill O'Reilly on the Fox news talk show The O'Reilly Factor, Nov. 6, 2015. | AP Photo

 

Donald Trump lavished praise on fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski Monday night, but told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that the reshuffling signaled a shift in the campaign's strategy.

"I think Corey’s terrific. I watched him before. He was terrific toward me. Said I was a talented person. And he’s a talented person," Trump said on "The O'Reilly Factor." "He’s a good guy. He’s a friend of mine. But I think it’s time now for a different kind of a campaign. We ran a small, beautiful, well-unified campaign. It worked very well in the primaries."

During the interview, Trump also addressed speculation about his running mate, telling O'Reilly that a decision would come at the Republican National Convention next month in Cleveland. Trump also praised Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, whose name has come up as a potential pick for the vice presidency slot.

"He’s got good judgment. He’s a good guy. He’s been amazingly helpful," Trump said of Gingrich. "I watch him on the different shows, including yours, but I’m with him also. He’s got very great talent.”

Trump also discussed recent polls, which show him trailing Clinton in a general election match-up, downplaying the results as being too early to forecast the outcome of the race.

“I think it’s very close. I think that probably one poll came out pretty much even," he said. "I just don’t know. It’s fairly early to have polling. I think we haven’t even gotten started yet. You know I’m just literally just starting. And I view the convention as probably a real starting point. But I think it’s pretty even from what I’m seeing.

Latest Polls

2016 General Election: Trump vs. Clinton

Source -- http://elections.huffingtonpos...ion-trump-vs-clinton

The national poll will skyrocket in Trump's favor after the first Clinton/Trump debate. You heard this before and you will hear it again.

2016 Electoral College

Clinton vs Trump - National Summary

Most Recent Poll (middate): 2016-06-15 00:00 UTC

Last Poll Update: 2016-06-19 06:58 UTC

140.9 days until polls start to close

Source -- http://electiongraphs.com/2016...ys=0&Format=spec

Cobra posted:

The national poll will skyrocket in Trump's favor after the first Clinton/Trump debate. You heard this before and you will hear it again.

The national poll always skyrocket for each presidential representative after the respective party's convention and the race will then be on for the November 2014 elections.

On election night in November, Hillary Clinton will be elected President of the US_of_A.   

Drumpf shoots from the hip without any concern for the truth. One day he is for the Iraq War the next he's against it.

“The LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community — they are so much in favor of what I’ve been saying over the last three or four days. Ask the gays what they think and what they do, in, not only Saudi Arabia, but many of these countries, and then you tell me — who’s your friend, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?"

–Donald Trump in a boast that provoked widespread ridicule from the LGBT community, June 15, 2016

Source -- http://politicalhumor.about.co...ald-Trump-Quotes.htm

The Latest from PolitiFact

Not once, not twice, not four times but six times

Hillary Clinton

Says Donald Trump has "bankrupted his companies not once, not twice but four times."

— PolitiFact National on Tuesday, June 21st, 2016

Yep, Donald Trump's companies have declared bankruptcy...more than four times

By Linda Qiu on Tuesday, June 21st, 2016 at 4:37 p.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...e-declared-bankrupt/

Hillary Clinton mocked Donald Trump’s business failings in a major speech arguing that the presumptive Republican nominee would be disastrous for the economy.

"He’s written a lot of books about business. They all seem to end at Chapter 11," Clinton quipped, adding. "He bankrupted his companies not once, not twice, but four times."

We rated a similarly worded claim from Trump’s former primary rival Carly Fiorina Mostly True, because it’s not accurate to say Trump is solely to blame. (For the record, Trump doesn’t deny the charge and instead argues it was a smart business decision.) At the time, we found four bankruptcies, but since then, we’ve found two more for a total of six. So Clinton was right that Trump bankrupted companies four times, and she could have offered a higher count as well.

Let’s go through them one by one.

Bankruptcy No. 1: The Trump Taj Mahal, 1991

Trump’s first bankruptcy may have hit the businessman, personally, the hardest, according to news reports.

He funded the construction of the $1 billion Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, N.J., which opened in 1990, primarily with junk bonds at a whopping 14 percent interest. A year later, the casino was nearly $3 billion in debt, while Trump had racked up nearly $900 million in personal liabilities. So Trump decided to file for Chapter 11 reorganization, according to the New York Times.

As a result, Trump gave up half his personal stake in the casino and sold his yacht and airline, according to the Washington Post.

Bankruptcy No. 2: Trump Castle, 1992

Within a year of his first Chapter 11 filing, Trump found himself in bankruptcy court again for Trump Castle, which opened in 1985. It was his "weakest gambling hall," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and ironically faced competition from Trump Taj Mahal. In March 1992, the Castle filed a prepackaged bankruptcy plan, and Trump gave up his 50 percent share in the casino for lower interest rates on $338 million worth of bonds.

Bankruptcy No. 3: Trump Plaza and Casino, 1992

The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, which opened in 1984, declared bankruptcy at the same time as the Castle. A $210 million joint project of Trump’s and Harrah’s, the casino had racked up $250 million in debt by 1992, after a staggering 80 percent decline in cash flow. So Trump Plaza filed for prepackaged bankruptcy that spring as well.

Bankruptcy No. 4: Plaza Hotel, 1992

Later that year, Trump filed bankruptcy on another Plaza, this one in New York. Trump purchased the Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan for $390 million in 1988, but it accumulated more than $550 million in debt by 1992. In December 1992, Trump relinquished a 49 percent stake in the Plaza to a total of six lenders, according to ABC News. Trump remained the hotel’s CEO, but it was merely a gesture; he didn’t earn a salary and had no say in the hotel’s day-to-day operations, according to the New York Times.

Bankruptcy No. 5: Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, 2004

Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004 when his casinos -- including the Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Marina and Trump Plaza casinos in Atlantic City, and a riverboat casino in Indiana -- had accrued an estimated $1.8 billion in debt, according to the Associated Press. Trump agreed to reduce his share in the company from 47 percent to 27 percent in a restructuring plan, but he was still the company’s largest single shareholder and remained in charge of its operations. Trump told the Associated Press at the time that the company represented less than 1 percent of his net worth.

Bankruptcy No. 6: Trump Entertainment Resorts, 2009

Trump Entertainment Resorts -- formerly Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts -- was hit hard by the 2008 economic recession and missed a $53.1 million bond interest payment in December 2008, according to ABC News. It declared Chapter 11 in February 2009. After debating with the company’s board of directors, Trump resigned as the company’s chairman and had his corporate stake in the company reduced to 10 percent. The company continued to use Trump’s name in licensing.

Whose fault is it anyways?

Experts told us during the primary season Trump alone didn’t cause the bankruptcies. While six in 25 years is a lot, five were tied to a struggling gaming industry.

Trump was acting, they said, as any investor would. Investors often own many non-integrated companies, which they fund by taking on debt, and some of them inevitably file for bankruptcy, Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University, previously told us.

He added that people typically wouldn’t personally blame former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney or investor Warren Buffett for individual failures within their investment companies, Bain Capital and Berkshire Hathaway, respectively.

"The only difference is that Trump puts his name on his companies, which means people associate them with him, but he's not at all the leader in the bankruptcy space," Levitin said.

Our ruling

Clinton said, Trump has "bankrupted his companies not once, not twice but four times."

Trump has actually filed Chapter 11 six times, four times within two years in the 1990s, once more in 2004 and once more in 2009. But experts told us Trump shouldn’t bear all the responsibility, as Clinton’s wording suggests, as the majority of bankruptcies happened as the overall casino industry struggled.

We rate her claim Mostly True.

Latest from PolitiFact

One is much costlier than the other

Donald Trump

"For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America."

— PolitiFact National on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016

Trump wrong that Clinton's refugee plan would cost more than rebuilding all inner cities

By Jon Greenberg on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016 at 5:03 p.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...an-would-cost-more-/

==============================

Trump’s numbers are off by a huge margin.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire.

==============================

A day after Hillary Clinton gave her list of Donald Trump’s many flaws on the economy, Trump returned the favor. In a speech from New York, he called her a "world-class liar" who has "spent her entire life making money for special interests."

Trump delivered a broadside on Clinton’s immigration policies — to him, they represent "mass amnesty" and "open borders" — and blended those faults with her plans for refugees.

"Hillary also wants to spend hundreds of billions to resettle Middle Eastern refugees in the United States, on top of the current record level of immigration," Trump said. "For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America."

We asked the Trump campaign where he got those spending numbers and did not hear back. But as you’ll see, whatever number Clinton could conceivably spend resettling refugees come nowhere near what it would cost to rebuild America’s urban centers.

The cost of refugees

The only numbers we could find for Clinton’s budget plans were $15 million for immigrant integration services (from her campaign website), and $582 million to resettle 70,000 refugees. The second figure comes from an analysis of federal refugee spending by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.

We used that as one starting point.

President Barack Obama seeks to increase the number of refugees accepted from around the world to 100,000. That includes 10,000 Syrian refugees. Clinton has said she wants to take in 65,000 Syrians. If we add her higher number to Obama’s, and we assume she wouldn’t trim his plan, we can estimate a total number of refugees of 155,000.

Scaling up the dollar amounts, we can roughly estimate a total cost for her plan of about $1.3 billion. That is about half a percent of the "hundreds of billions" that Trump claimed.

We also looked at the Obama administration’s FY 2017 budget request for refugee and entrant assistance. That is a bit under $2.2 billion for 100,000 refugees. When you add in the additional costs for more resettled Syrian refugees, you might get a budget in the neighborhood of $3 billion to $4 billion.

The cost of rebuilding inner cities

Trump used a term that generally refers to low-income urban neighborhoods. What he meant by rebuilding them is unclear. It could include rebuilding substandard housing, fixing aging water systems, investing in schools and job training, creating an enticing business environment, or any number of aspects of life where low-income communities are lacking.

Solomon Greene, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, an academic center in Washington, told us he knows of no comprehensive study that added up the rehabilitation needs of every American city. He did, however, note that alone there is a $26 billion backlog to repair the nation’s public housing.

"It’s a very conservative estimate," Greene said. "It only includes public housing, and that’s a small share of the low-income housing stock."

Not all public housing is in urban centers, but Greene, a housing specialist, told us that the great majority of it is.

New York City alone could use billions of dollars in improvements.

The Center for an Urban Future, a research and policy group supported by funders ranging from MetLife to the Child Welfare Fund, estimated that fixing the Big Apple’s aging infrastructure would cost about $47 billion over five years.

Researchers at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, an urban planning research center in Cambridge, Mass., found a number of estimates for different urban needs.

• The Federal Transit Administration estimated in 2013 that it will cost $85.9 billion to bring the nation’s transit systems to a state of good repair.

• The Council on Great City Schools said facility needs for schools in the 50 largest cities will cost $85 billion.

• The institute’s director George McCarthy estimated that it would cost $975 million just to demolish abandoned structures in Detroit.

We could go further, but the numbers are clear. Barely scratching the surface of the needs of America’s cities, we find a price tag of over $225 billion.

Even if Clinton doubled the Obama administration’s funding for refugees, the money would barely make a dent.

Our ruling

Trump said that Clinton wants to spend hundreds of billions on refugees and for that money, "we could rebuild every inner city in America." Trump’s campaign provided no supporting numbers.

Clinton has not said how much she would spend on refugees, but the Obama administration request for FY 2017 is about $2.2 billion. That figure could increase for Clinton, as she has said she wants to take in more Syrian refugees. If it doubles or even triples, it is nowhere near "hundreds of billions."

It is also a scant fraction of the price tag to rebuild America’s inner cities. There is no comprehensive tally of what it would take to deal with substandard housing and infrastructure, but we quickly found a backlog of about $225 billion in projects.

Trump’s numbers are off by a huge margin. We rate this claim Pants on Fire.

 The Latest from PolitiFact

Do you support the invasion? 'Yeah'

Donald Trump

"I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war (in Iraq), and yes, even before the war ever started."  

— PolitiFact National on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016

Trump still wrong on his claim that opposed Iraq War ahead of the invasion

By Aaron Sharockman on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016 at 11:45 a.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...osed-iraq-war-ahead/

============================

This claim rates False.

============================

Donald Trump speaking June 22, 2016. (Getty)

Presumptive Republican presidential Donald Trump keeps selling the myth that he was against Iraq War even before the war started.

In a policy speech June 22, 2016, in New York, Trump tried to contrast himself with his likely fall opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"In short, Hillary Clinton’s tryout for the presidency has produced one deadly foreign policy disaster after another," Trump said. "It all started with her bad judgment in supporting the War in Iraq in the first place.

"Though I was not in government service, I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started," Trump said.

Trump is correct that Clinton supported the war in Iraq. But Trump is wrong to suggest he opposed the war before it started.

We searched newspaper articles and television transcripts from 2002 and 2003 amid the debate leading up to the Iraq War. We didn’t find any examples of Trump unequivocally denouncing the war until a year after the war began.

Trump’s comments

Most damning to Trump’s claim is a September 2002 interview in which Trump said he supported the Iraq invasion.

Shock jock Howard Stern asked Trump if he supported the looming invasion.

Trump responded, "Yeah, I guess so."

This goes directly against Trump’s claims that he criticized the rush to war before the war began.

On Jan. 28, 2003, just under three months before the invasion, Fox News’ Neil Cavuto asked Trump whether President George W. Bush should be more focused on Iraq or the economy.

Speaking of Iraq, Trump said, "Well, he has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps shouldn't be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, you know. He's under a lot of pressure. I think he's doing a very good job. But, of course, if you look at the polls, a lot of people are getting a little tired. I think the Iraqi situation is a problem. And I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned."

Trump’s comment here suggests he was skeptical of the mission in Iraq, and he said the economy should be a higher priority.

But does this prove Trump prove was "among the earliest to criticize the rush to war"?

Hardly.

A week after the United States invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, Trump gave differing takes. At an Academy Awards after-party, Trump said that "the war’s a mess," according to the Washington Post. He told Fox News that because of the war, "The market’s going to go up like a rocket."

Trump’s harshest criticism came more than a year into the war, in an August 2004 article in Esquire:

"Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the country? C'mon. Two minutes after we leave, there's going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he'll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn't have.

"What was the purpose of this whole thing? Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who've been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing!"

He told CNN’s Larry King in November 2004, "I do not believe that we made the right decision going into Iraq, but, you know, hopefully, we'll be getting out."

Clearly Trump opposed the Iraq War in its early years. There’s no evidence, though, that he advocated against the war in the first place, or that he was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war.

Our ruling

On the Iraq War, Trump said, "I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started."

The record just doesn’t support this.

We could only find one example of Trump commenting on the Iraq War before the invasion where he seemed apprehensive but not vehemently opposed to the operation. In another interview, Trump said he supported the invasion.

This claim rates False.

Donald Trump flubs claim that Hillary Clinton deleted her support of trade deal from her book

By C. Eugene Emery Jr. on Thursday, June 23rd, 2016 at 4:32 p.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...y-clinton-deleted-h/

=========================

Anyone who compares the hardcover and paperback versions of the book can see that the claim is ridiculous.

We rate it Pants On Fire!

Deleted? So why are her comments still there?

=========================

Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of trying to delete part of her personal history during a June 22, 2016, speech that focused in part on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Clinton tried to promote the deal as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, but she withdrew her support for the 12-nation pact in October 2015 amid sharp criticism from Democratic primary opponent Bernie Sanders.

In his speech, Donald Trump took credit for getting her to change her mind and accused her of trying to cover up her support.

"Hillary Clinton has also been the biggest promoter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will ship millions more of our jobs overseas — and give up congressional power to an international foreign commission," Trump said. "Now, because I have pointed out why it would be such a disastrous deal, she is pretending that she is against it.

"She has even deleted this record of total support from her book," he said, adding, "deletion is something she is very good at," a reference to the tens of thousands of emails she deleted on her home internet server.

Did Hillary Clinton actually censor her own book to hide her past support for the trade agreement that has since come under fire?

We contacted the Trump campaign asking for its facts to back up the claim. They didn't respond to our query.

For starters, there is no evidence that any of Trump's comments have influenced Clinton's thoughts on the treaty.

As for the treaty itself, Clinton offered support for it in 2012, long before the deal was finalized. She hailed the deal as "setting the gold standard" during a 2012 speech in Australia, to name just one example. She now says she was, at the time, trying to sell the deal to U.S. allies as a member of the Obama administration.

The deal was reached in October 2015, well after Clinton departed as secretary of state, and signed the following the February.

During her debates with Sanders, Clinton said she had waited until the deal was actually negotiated before ultimately deciding to oppose it. Because of her early supportive comments, we rated her statement Half True.

So what, if anything, did she say about the deal in her book Hard Choices?

The book was published in June 2014, with a deal still more than a year away.

On pages 77 and 78 of hardcover edition, she said the deal "would link markets throughout Asia and the Americas, lowering trade barriers while raising standards on labor, the environment, and intellectual property."

Clinton also refers to it as "important for American workers, who would benefit from competing on a more level playing field. And it was a strategic initiative that would strengthen the position of the United States in Asia."

"Because TPP negotiations are still ongoing, it makes sense to reserve judgment until we can evaluate the final proposed agreement," she wrote, echoing the stance she would take when Sanders criticized her support for the deal. "It’s safe to say that the TPP won’t be perfect—no deal negotiated among a dozen countries ever will be—but its higher standards, if implemented and enforced, should benefit American businesses and workers."

So how much of this did Clinton delete from the paperback edition, which the publisher says was trimmed to accommodate the smaller size?

Nothing.

The pages are now renumbered as 69 and 70, but the content is the same.

We found one reference to the TPP that was cut. Here it is from page 254, in a chapter dealing with Latin American issues:

So we worked hard to improve and ratify trade agreements with Colombia and Panama and encouraged Canada and the group of countries that became known as the Pacific Alliance -- Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile -- all open-market democracies driving toward a more prosperous future to join negotiations with Asian nations on TPP, the trans-Pacific trade agreement. The Alliance stood in stark contrast to Venezuela, with its more authoritarian policies and state-controlled economy.

That's a description of trying to get other countries involved, not a ringing endorsement.

Finally, Clinton came out in opposition to the deal after it was finalized in October 2015. By then, the paperback had been out for six months.

Our ruling

Trump said Hillary Clinton "has even deleted this record of total support (for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement) from her book."

The paperback removed a small reference to the TPP but the two pages that talked about it and why the agreement was important weren't deleted. The paperback edition continues to have text expressing support for the trade deal.

Anyone who compares the hardcover and paperback versions of the book can see that the claim is ridiculous.

We rate it Pants On Fire!

What do we know about Hillary Clinton's religion? A lot, actually

By Neelesh Moorthy on Friday, June 24th, 2016 at 11:53 a.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...lintons-religion-lo/

===============================

Trump’s statement is inaccurate and ridiculous.

We rate it Pants on Fire.

Only if you don't look

===============================

Donald Trump has once again questioned a presidential candidate’s religious affiliation, accusing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton of shielding her religious preference from the public eye.

Speaking prior to a gathering hosted by the conservative Christian activist organization United in Purpose, Trump said there has been no public reference to Clinton’s religion. The comment was captured in a video from E.W. Jackson, a former nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor who attended the gathering.

"We don't know anything about Hillary in terms of religion," Trump said in the video. "Now, she's been in the public eye for years and years, and yet there's no — there's nothing out there. There’s like nothing out there."

This is not the first time Trump has questioned a candidate’s religion. In 2011, Trump floated the possibility that President Barack Obama, whose path to Christianity is well-documented, could be a Muslim.

At the gathering, Trump also made the broader claim that Clinton would not protect religious liberty.

"We can’t be again politically correct and say we pray for all our leaders, because all of your leaders are selling Christianity down the tubes, selling evangelicals down the tubes," he said.

So, what does Clinton have to say about her religion? A lot, we found out.

On the campaign trail

Let’s get this out of the way: Clinton is a Methodist, and the record on that is abundantly clear.

The Clinton campaign directed us to several news articles where Clinton discussed her religion, including a Jan. 25 campaign rally in Knoxville, Iowa. When asked about her beliefs, Clinton cited her Methodist faith and tied it into her support for the poor, citing the teachings of Jesus.

"Because it sure does seem to favor the poor and the merciful and those who in worldly terms don’t have a lot but who have the spirit that God recognizes as being at the core of love and salvation," she said.

She went on to criticize those who use Christianity to "condemn so quickly and judge so harshly."

In February 2016, after the New Hampshire primary, Clinton paraphrased a phrase popular among Methodists and often attributed to John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church.

"You know, my family and my faith taught me a simple credo — do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, for all the people you can," she said.

She called upon her personal spirituality during her unsuccessful 2008 bid for president.

"I was raised to pray, you know, as a little girl, you know, saying my prayers at night, saying grace at meals, praying in, you know, church," she said at a 2007 presidential forum.

Clinton has definitely brought up her religious background on the campaign trail this time around to convey both her political and personal philosophies. However, the intended message has not always hit home with voters.

A 2016 Pew poll found that 43 percent of people found Clinton "not religious" compared to 60 percent for Trump. A 2008 Pew poll had 31 percent thinking her not religious, 53 percent only somewhat religious.

Formative years

Religion has played a large role in Clinton’s life even before "there was any political advantage to do so," said Patrick Maney, a Bill Clinton biographer and professor of history at Boston College.

Hillary Clinton’s religious upbringing starts around the sixth grade in Park Ridge, Ill., where she attended Bible classes and participated in the Altar Guild at the First United Methodist Church, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein in his Clinton biography.

There, she met Don Jones, a Methodist youth minister who took Clinton under his wing. At Jones’ memorial in 2009, Clinton attributed her pursuit of social justice to Jones’ teaching.

"He taught me the meaning of the words ‘faith in action’ and the importance of social justice and human rights," she said at the time.

In the conservative community of Park Ridge, Jones was considered to be more liberal and a free thinker, occasionally drawing ire for it. Jones made it a point to teach Clinton how "Jesus would deal with social issues," said William Chafe, a professor of history at Duke University who has studied Clinton extensively.

"He took Hillary and the youth group into the slums of Chicago, had them interact with poor blacks and Puerto Ricans, and brought them to hear (Martin Luther King, Jr.) preach," Chafe said. "Even though her father was a Goldwater Republican."

Jones was eventually asked to leave by members of the community, notably one of Clinton’s teachers Paul Carlson, who found his teachings too radical. The disagreements they had informed her shift in political philosophy, Clinton wrote in her 2003 autobiography Living History.

"Though my eyes were opening, I still mostly parroted the conventional wisdom of Park Ridge’s and my father’s politics," she wrote. "While Don Jones threw me into ‘liberalizing’ experiences, Paul Carlson … reinforced my already strong anti-communist views."

Her critics have actually used her relationship with Jones against her as a "radicalizing influence," Maney said. However, even after leaving for Wellesley College, the two kept in touch.

"I wonder if it's possible to be a mental conservative and a heart liberal," she wrote Jones in a letter, reflecting on her changing political ideology and its religious influences.

Conservative historian Paul Kengor, author of the book God and Hillary Clinton, told PolitiFact that Clinton has deviated from recent Methodist doctrine on abortion and gay marriage.

The United Methodist Church recently voted in May on actions to the contrary of Clinton’s views on those topics — withdrawing from a pro-choice group and choosing not to alter its stance on gay marriage.

"I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare," she said at a 2008 forum commenting on how her Methodist tradition has complicated the issue.

Kengor said in an interview with Christianity Today hat Clinton "walks step by step with the Methodist leadership into a very liberal Christianity."  

She continued to attend church at Wellesley, and Chafe noted that her social justice pursuits meshed with her religious convictions once she got to Yale as well.

"She immediately identified with Marion Wright Edelman's Children's Defense Fund at Yale and worked with them after graduating from Yale," Chafe said. The group advocated for family rights.

The trend continues after moving to Arkansas in the 1970s, where she taught Sunday school at the First United Methodist Church, Maney said.

Clinton also attended the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington as first lady. Kengor told PolitiFact she was considered a "regular" at the church, which is considered to be more liberal than the larger Methodist denomination.

Bill Clinton is a Baptist, not a Methodist. Hillary Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, was raised a Methodist.

In her own words

Clinton has said that "advertising" her faith publicly is not her first instinct. Chafe noted she has relied on it less extensively in the recent past.

Nonetheless, she has expounded on her faith in several public comments and books since entering the national spotlight with the election of her husband as president in 1992.

"Bill and I went into our bedroom, closed the door and prayed together for God’s help as he took on this awesome honor and responsibility," Clinton wrote in Living History of her husband winning the 1992 election.

In the same book, she describes meeting her "prayer partners" at the 1993 National Prayer Breakfast, and the gifts of Scripture they provided her.

"Of all the thousands of gifts I received in my eight years in the White House, few were more welcome and needed than these 12 intangible gifts of discernment, peace, compassion, faith, fellowship, vision, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, love, joy and courage," she wrote.

Her first book — It Takes A Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us — published in 1996, includes a section devoted to Clinton’s religious affiliation, "Children are Born Believers." In the chapter, she marvels about children’s potential to grasp spiritual issues and cites it as reason to defend religious freedom.

"We are only children of God, not God. Therefore, we must not attempt to fit God into little boxes, claiming that He supports this or that political position," she wrote.

References to Clinton’s faith surfaced in 1998, when news of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky hit the press, and in 2000 when she campaigned for the U.S. Senate.

In 2014, Clinton spoke to United Methodist Women, citing the Methodist Church as inspiring her to "advocate for children and families, for women and men around the world who are oppressed and persecuted, denied their human rights and human dignity."

"I’ll always cherish the Methodist Church because it gave us the great gift of personal salvation, but the great obligation of social gospel, and for me, having faith, hope, and love in action was exactly what we were called to do," she said.

Our ruling

Trump said, "We don't know anything about Hillary in terms of religion."

The reality is we were able to find quite a lot about Clinton’s Methodist upbringing and beliefs, and how she says it ties into her political philosophy. We documented just some of what we found here, and experts agree there is more out there.

Trump’s statement is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire.

Clinton: Trump called pregnant employees 'an inconvenience'

By Nadia Pflaum on Friday, June 24th, 2016 at 1:01 p.m., http://www.politifact.com/ohio...mployees-inconvenie/

===========================

Clinton’s claim is accurate. We rate it True.

Says Donald Trump called pregnant employees "an inconvenience."

— Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, June 21st, 2016 in a rally in Columbus, Ohio

===========================

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton uncorked a torrent of criticism on her opponent, Donald Trump, at a rally in Ohio’s capital city. The premise: what America’s economy would look like with Trump in charge.

"Over the years, he’s said all kinds of things about women in the workforce," Clinton said. "He once called pregnant employees -- and I quote -- ‘an inconvenience.’ "

Clinton went on to say that even she was incredulous that Trump made remarks like the "inconvenience" statement, despite assurances from her researchers and speechwriters.

We searched for the clip.

Trump’s comment stems from a Dateline NBC interview of Trump from 2004. The segment, "Blonde Ambition," was about Carolyn Kepcher, Trump’s Apprentice sidekick and executive vice president of Trump’s golf properties. Kepcher had just released Carolyn 101, a memoir of her business experience.

Kepcher describes herself as a straight-shooter, but as her Dateline interviewer points out, that seems to conflict with an anecdote in the book in which Kepcher recounts waiting six months before telling Trump that she was pregnant.

"You were worried that he might feel inconvenienced?" the reporter asked.

"Maybe, in my mind, he might think perhaps that this might be a setback," Kepcher answered.

When the piece turned to Trump, he answered a question that the viewers don’t get to hear, due to editing. "Well you know, pregnancy is never, um -- it’s a wonderful thing for the woman, it’s a wonderful thing for the husband, it’s certainly an inconvenience for a business. And whether people want to say that or not, the fact is it is an inconvenience for a person that is running a business."

Because the viewers don’t hear the question Trump is responding to, and the only other person to use the word "inconvenience" was the Dateline reporter, it’s possible that the term may have been introduced as part of the reporter’s question.

Studies have shown that the costs of accommodating pregnant employees is minimal. The National Women’s Law Center published a fact sheet in 2012 that pointed out that the accommodations employers already provide for disabled employees are much the same as what pregnant women require, only temporarily. And the positive gains -- better recruitment and retention of workers, boosts in productivity, reductions in absenteeism, better workplace safety -- far outweigh any costs, according to the fact sheet.

Trump’s views on pregnancy didn’t sway Kepcher’s admiration for her former boss. "If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Donald, it’s to make a decision, make it fast, and stick with it," she said.

Trump certainly didn’t view his daughter Ivanka’s pregnancy as an inconvenience when she stood beside him, well into her third trimester, stumping in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Trump told crowds in both states that he’d love for his daughter to have her baby there.

"You know, she had a baby like five days ago," Trump said of Ivanka at a March rally in New York, about 10 days after Ivanka gave birth. "She did a good job. So I should not say Ivanka, you're fired, right? I promise."

We searched but were unable to find any additional comments made by Trump about women employees becoming pregnant.

Our ruling

Clinton said that Trump called pregnancy "an inconvenience" for business owners. Trump indeed used that word in a 2004 interview with NBC’s Dateline.

"The fact is it is an inconvenience for a person that is running a business," Trump said.

Clinton’s claim is accurate. We rate it True.

Hillary Clinton comments on Donald Trump

So says the Economist Intelligence Unit

Hillary Clinton

"Risk analysts listed Donald Trump, a Donald Trump presidency, as one of the top threats facing the global economy, ahead of terrorism."

— PolitiFact National on Monday, June 27th, 2016

Hillary Clinton correct that analysts have called Donald Trump a top global economic risk

By Louis Jacobson on Monday, June 27th, 2016 at 4:08 p.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...s-have-called-donal/

==================================

Hillary Clinton, riding a bump in the polls, kept the heat on Donald Trump during a speech in Cincinnati that marked the first time she had campaigned alongside Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of the progressive wing of her party.

"Risk analysts listed Donald Trump, a Donald Trump presidency, as one of the top threats facing the global economy, ahead of terrorism," Clinton said during the speech on June 27, 2016.

We don’t take a position on whether Trump actually is one of the top threats facing the global economy. But we thought we’d check to see whether Clinton has solid evidence that professional risk analysts have made that argument.

So is Clinton right about how analysts have rated Trump? Basically, yes.

When we asked the Clinton campaign what she was referring to, they pointed us to the periodic rankings of global risk published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The Economist Intelligence Unit -- an affiliate of The Economist, the London-based newsweekly -- is a research and analysis firm that supplies clients, including businesses, with information about opportunities and risks around the world.

The firm made headlines in March 2016 when it listed the possibility of a Trump presidency as one of the biggest threats to "companies’ capacity to operate at target profitability." The rankings are based on "qualitative" judgments of a how powerfully an event could affect the world and how likely it is to happen, the firm says.

In its March ratings, the firm rated the risks from a Trump presidency as 12 on a 25-point scale. That ranked Trump sixth among the 10-item list of biggest threats, tied with "the rising threat of jihadi terrorism destabilising the global economy."

But the Trump threat level increased in the July 2016 rankings. A Trump presidency now ranks as the third-biggest global threat, with an increased score of 16 on the 25-point scale. In the meantime, the risk from jihadi terrorism has remained constant with a score of 12.

In the July ratings, the only higher scores were 20 for "China experiences a hard landing" and, in a tie with Trump, a 16 for "currency volatility and persistent commodity prices weakness."

Specifically, the firm wrote that "although we do not expect Mr. Trump to defeat his most likely Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton, there are risks to this forecast, especially in the event of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil or a sudden economic downturn." The writeup cited his "hostility" to free trade, his hard line on Muslims, his "militaristic tendencies," his skepticism toward NATO, and his "indifference" to nuclear proliferation in Asia.

The firm had never rated a pending candidacy to be a geopolitical risk to the United States and the world, an official told Politico.

Donald Trump statement

The filibuster that wasn't

Donald Trump

Says Hillary Clinton "filibustered legislation to reform" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

— PolitiFact National on Tuesday, June 28th, 2016

Trump wrongly says Clinton filibustered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac legislation

By Adam Thorp on Tuesday, June 28th, 2016 at 4:47 p.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...bustered-fannie-mae/

===============================

Donald Trump Deletes Tweet Showing Hillary Clinton and Star of David Shape

By ALAN RAPPEPORT, JULY 2, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07...r-of-david.html?_r=0

Donald J. Trump at the Western Conservative Summit on Friday in Denver. Credit David Zalubowski/Associated Press

Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came under fire on Saturday for posting on Twitter an image of the Star of David shape next to a picture of Hillary Clinton and calling his opponent the “most corrupt candidate ever!”

The post that Donald J. Trump deleted from his Twitter account.

 

While the six-pointed star is used in other contexts, including as a symbol of many Sheriff’s Departments, it has deep meaning in Judaism and the image was overlayed atop a pile of money. It appeared to play into the stereotype of Jews being obsessed with finances. After being derided on social media, Mr. Trump deleted the post and replaced it with one that had a circle instead of the star shape.

Donald J. Trump

 

✔ @realDonaldTrump

While Mr. Trump has been working to professionalize his campaign, the Twitter post was the latest example of him making remarks many deem offensive. Several weeks ago, he insinuated that a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University could not be impartial in the case because of his Mexican heritage.

Mr. Trump apparently realized the problem with the original Twitter post because he rarely apologizes for his remarks or deletes his posts. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Before the post came down, Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, asked on his personal Twitter account, “Why is there a Star of David?” Other commenters were more blunt:

Mr. Trump regularly touts his close ties to Jewish people, noting that his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married her husband, Jared Kushner. He also has promised to make the security of Israel a top priority if he is elected president.

However, Mr. Trump has frustrated some Jews for initially declining to take a firm stand on the side of Israel when discussing the conflict with the Palestinians. And he angered some last year when he joked about Jews being good with money during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Mr. Trump has also been criticized for failing to denounce supporters who have harangued Jewish journalists on social media and at gatherings of white nationalists, and for being slow to disavow the support of David Duke, the former Klansman.

 Donald Trump Statement

Trying to connect dots that don't connect

Donald Trump

"As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton laundered money to Bill Clinton through Laureate Education, while Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of the group."  

— PolitiFact National on Friday, July 1st, 2016

Did Hillary Clinton launder millions of dollars while she was secretary of state?

By Joseph Cariz, Lauren Carroll on Friday, July 1st, 2016 at 12:30 p.m.,  http://www.politifact.com/trut...lions-dollars-while/

=========================

Our ruling

We rate this claim False.

Trump said Hillary Clinton "laundered money to Bill Clinton through Laureate Education, while Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of the group." That's a serious of charge of illegal activity.

Actually, the State Department under Clinton never made any direct transfers to Laureate Education. Trump’s source conflates Laureate with a separate charitable organization that received funds from a separate government agency. The International Youth Foundation is a respected nonprofit that has received money from the government since the Bush years, before Clinton joined the State Department.

=========================

17 times Donald Trump said one thing and then denied it

By Linda Qiu on Wednesday, July 6th, 2016 at 11:04 a.m., http://www.politifact.com/trut...-then-denied-saying/

Donald Trump once claimed to have "the world’s greatest memory," but he seems to suffer bouts of amnesia when it comes to his own statements.

"I never said ____" followed by a charge of media dishonesty is a favorite refrain of the presumptive Republican nominee’s, and it’s something that he’s been doing for years.

For example, in 2014, as he was fighting to prevent wind turbines from being installed near his golf course in Scotland and ruining his views, Trump told a Twitter user he "never said" that "wind farms are a disaster for Scotland." Yet he’s quoted in the Irish Times saying that verbatim.

And just before he jumped into the presidential race, Trump reignited his spat with Jon Stewart, calling the comedian "a wiseguy with no talent" and denying that he ever attacked Stewart for not using his real last name, Leibowitz. But Trump did go after Stewart’s use of a stage name in a series of tweets that many took to be anti-Semitic.

Trump’s forgetfulness during the 2016 cycle has been noted by many, like New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum:

emily nussbaum

 

✔ @emilynussbaum

That sounded like a good idea to us. Here are 17 times Trump said something and then denied saying it in chronological order.

July 19, 2015: Saying John McCain is not a war hero

One of the first controversies of his 2016 campaign erupted when the brash billionaire said McCain, a prisoner of war in the Vietnam War, isn’t a war hero. Facing intense backlash, Trump didn’t exactly deny his comment, but insisted it was taken out of context.

"Four times, I said he is a hero," he said on July 19 on ABC. "But you know … people choose little selective pieces."

We rated his claim Mostly False. Looking at the transcript, Trump literally said McCain is a hero five times, but never without caveats. Once, he added "perhaps, I believe" before conceding the point. Twice, he was interrupted. And the last two times, Trump said, "He is a war hero because he was captured." In other words, Trump also cherry-picked his interview and misquoted himself.

Aug. 9, 2015: Calling women ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs’ and ‘disgusting animals’

Trump’s spat with Fox News host Megyn Kelly began when Kelly brought up various statements Trump made about women at the first GOP presidential debate in August 2015.

"You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals,’ " Kelly said.

Trump interrupted to quip, "only Rosie O’Donnell." A few days later, Trump was more forceful and serious in his denial of Kelly’s premise.

"Well, some of the things that she said, I didn't say, okay?" Trump said on Meet the Press.

That’s False. He’s used those exact words to describe O’Donnell, New York Times columnist Gail Collins, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, a lawyer who had to pump breast milk and Bette Midler. He also said "it must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees" to female contestant on the Celebrity Apprentice, as Kelly noted.

Oct. 28, 2015: ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator’

At a GOP debate in Colorado, CNBC moderator Becky Quick noted Trump called Florida Sen. Marco Rubio Facebook founder "Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator, because he was in favor of the H-1B visa."

"I never said that. I never said that," Trump responded.

Pants on Fire! These words appear verbatim on Trump’s campaign website: "Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities."

Nov. 11, 2015: Implying China was part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

When asked about the pending trade deal with 12 Pacific Rim nations at a Republican primary debate in Milwaukee, Trump took to bashing China.

"The TPP is horrible deal," Trump said. "It's a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone." (For the record, Trump got a Pants on Fire for this claim.)

"You know, we might want to point out that China’s not part of this deal," quipped former rival Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. But a day later, Trump denied suggesting China was a signatory.

Donald J. Trump

 

✔ @realDonaldTrump

While Trump didn’t literally say China was a TPP partner, his denial doesn’t add up. After all, he didn’t name a single country involved in the deal, and he didn’t say "at a later date," as he claimed in the tweet. Even more perplexing is the notion that TPP partners like Japan and Vietnam would "design" a deal to benefit their regional rival.

Jan. 28, 2016: Asking for Megyn Kelly’s removal from a debate

Trump’s war with Kelly led to him boycotting the Fox News/Google debate in Iowa. An hour before the other candidates took the stage, Trump insisted on CNN his absence was due to a mocking Fox News press release and he "never once asked that (Kelly) be removed."

We rated that claim False. We found several instances of Trump and his campaign telling reporters and tweeting about skipping the debate because of Kelly. He went so far as to say Kelly "should not be allowed" to moderate, that she "should recuse herself," and she "shouldn’t be in the debate."

Feb. 11, 2016: Using a curse word to describe Ted Cruz

Trump denied using "a very bad word" — a synonym for cat — at a rally in Manchester, N.H., and demanded an apology from Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin for suggesting he had done so.

But Halperin has no reason to be sorry. There’s video evidence. An audience member called Trump rival Ted Cruz a slur for a woman. Trump repeated the p---- word after telling fans it was a "terrible" word in mock outrage.

Feb. 28, 2016: "I don’t know anything about David Duke"

After being rebuked left and right for declining to reject former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s support, Trump claimed he didn’t know anything about Duke at all.

Pants on Fire! Trump knew enough about Duke to denounce him two days earlier and once in August 2015. In 2000, he criticized Duke’s racism in the New York Times. And in 1991, he told Larry King he hated what votes for Duke, who was running for Louisiana Governor, represented.

March 15, 2016: Paying the legal fees of fans who punch protesters

Facing backlash for encouraging violence against protestors at his rallies, Trump denied that he once promised to pay the legal fees of supporters who roughed up protesters.

"I don’t condone violence," Trump said on ABC. "I never said I was going to pay for fees."

But this is what he told supporters in Iowa a month earlier: "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise."

March 16, 2016: Punching protestors in general

The next day, Trump denied that he had encouraged violence at all.

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly scolded Trump for it on his show: "You have said some very questionable things like, ‘maybe we punch them in face’ or something like that."

"I didn’t say that, Bill," Trump responded, before sort of admitting it. "All I did was make the statement, ‘I wouldn’t mind doing it.’"

While O’Reilly’s quote wasn’t exact, Trump’s statements on the matter weren’t exactly dispassionate.

"We’re not allowed to punch back any more. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to a guy like that in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks," Trump said at his February Las Vegas rally. "The guards are being very gentle with him. ... I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you."

March 30, 2016: Nuking ISIS

Trump denied being open to using nuclear weapons against ISIS at a town hall in Wisconsin.

"I didn’t say, ‘don’t take it (off the table).’ I said I would be very, very slow and hesitant to pull the trigger," he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

Trump is playing a word game here. A few days earlier, he told Bloomberg he'd "never rule anything out" in order to preserve an element of unpredictability.