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Live Tuesday Primary Updates: Trump Takes Hawaii

Mother Jones

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Citizens in four states will cast votes in Tuesday’s nominating contests, with presidential candidates on both sides eyeing the night’s biggest prize: Michigan, where 59 Republican delegates and 130 Democratic delegates are up for grabs. Next up for both sides is Mississippi, where 40 GOP delegates and 36 Democratic delegates are at stake, followed by Republican contests in Idaho and Hawaii (51 combined delegates).

Click here for our 2016 presidential primary delegate tracker.

Early polling gives the advantage to Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who appears poised to maintain his lead over Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, even as his hold of the GOP electorate has appeared to wane. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is favored to extend her Democratic delegate lead in both Michigan and Mississippi; nationally, she holds a 7 point lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Mississippi’s polls are the first to close tonight, at 8 p.m. Eastern, with Michigan wrapping up at 9 p.m. Eastern. The Republican showdowns in Idaho and Hawaii are expected to close at 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Eastern, respectively. Tuesday’s outcomes will set the stage for next week’s critical primaries in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. (You can track who has won delegates in each primary here.)

We’ll be here with the latest results as they come in.

UPDATE 16, Tuesday, March 8, 2:34 a.m. ET: With roughly 51 percent of precincts reporting, the networks are calling Hawaii for Donald Trump, who leads the field with 45 percent of the vote. Cruz is well behind at 31 percent. Rubio has 12 percent and Kasich 10 percent.

UPDATE 15, Tuesday, March 9, 1:41 a.m. ET: It’s early yet, but Trump is leading in Hawaii. With just 13 percent of precincts in, he’s at just over 42 percent. Cruz has around 28 percent, and Kasich and Rubio are neck and neck at around 14 percent.

UPDATE 14, Tuesday, March 9, 1:19 a.m. ET: Marco Rubio is having a bad night indeed. The Florida senator has gained zero delegates from tonight’s Michigan and Mississippi primaries. If he fails to reach the 20 percent threshold needed to win delegates in Idaho, he could miss yet another chance at getting a little traction in the GOP field. He’s currently just over 17 percent in Idaho, with 75 percent of precincts reporting. At a rally Tuesday night, even as Rubio and his spokesman dismissed reports that his own campaign staffers had told him to drop out, Rubio looked ahead to next week’s Florida primary, with 99 delegates are up for grabs. “It always comes down to Florida,” he said. With 151 delegates in his pocket, he’s a far cry from where he needs to be. Results will be coming in soon from Hawaii, where, with a little luck, Rubio could at least get himself on tonight’s delegate scoreboard.

UPDATE 13, Tuesday, March 9, 12:18 a.m. ET: Fox and NBC and CNN have projected a Cruz win in Idaho, where he now holds more than 42 percent of the vote with 53 percent reporting. But Clinton’s loss to Sanders in Michigan is the story of the night. The Democratic candidates debate again tomorrow evening. The GOP candidates will be debating on Thursday night.

UPDATE 12, Tuesday, March 8, 11:51 p.m. ET: Poll are completely worthless, at least for Michigan, where Hillary Clinton was projected by most to have a comfortable lead. In the Idaho GOP race, with 35 percent of precincts reporting, Cruz has increased his lead to 40.8 percent. Trump hangs back with 30.1 percent, Rubio with 18.2, and John Kasich a distant 6.9 percent.

UPDATE 11, Tuesday, March 8, 11:37 p.m. ET: Several networks have officially called Michigan for Bernie Sanders.

UPDATE 10, Tuesday, March 8, 11:28 p.m. ET: Results are coming in the Idaho GOP primary. With 17 percent reporting, Ted Cruz leads with just under 39 percent. Trump has around 30, and Rubio trails with 20. Bernie Sanders’ lead keeps inching up in the Michigan Dem primary—with 92 percent reporting, he’s carrying 50.4 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 47.7 percent. (CNN)

UPDATE 9, Tuesday, March 8, 11:01 p.m. ET: Leading by nearly 4 percentage points with 85 percent of precincts counted in the Michigan Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders thanked supporters for turning out in Michigan and elsewhere. “What tonight means is that the Bernie Sanders campaign, the people’s revolution that we are talking about, is strong in every part of the country,” he said, speaking to reporters in Miami. “We believe our strongest areas are yet to happen.” CNN reports that the Clinton campaign is preparing for a narrow loss.

UPDATE 8, Tuesday, March 8, 10:46 p.m. ET: Speaking in front of supporters tonight in Cleveland, Hillary Clinton slammed the divisive rhetoric among Republican contenders. “Running for president shouldn’t be about delivering insults,” she said, “it should be about delivering results for the American people.” Bernie Sanders is expected to speak with reporters shortly.

UPDATE 7, Tuesday, March 8, 10:29 p.m. ET: The Democratic race in Michigan is still too close to call. Bernie Sanders currently holds a narrow lead over Hillary Clinton, with more than 60 percent of precincts reporting. Sanders is strongly outperforming polling; as The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza points out, he has done well with Michigan’s black voters.

UPDATE 6, Tuesday, March 8, 10:08 p.m. ET: Donald Trump took a shot at Hillary Clinton at his press conference in Florida on Tuesday night, raising questions as to whether the Democratic front-runner would be allowed to run in the general election in light of a federal investigation into her use of a private email server during her stint as Secretary of State.

UPDATE 5, Tuesday, March 8, 9:37 p.m. ET: At a rambling press conference at his country club in Jupiter, Florida, Donald Trump thanked his supporters, including New York Yankees legend Paul O’Neill, for his string of victories in Michigan and Mississippi. Backed by a table bearing what he claimed to be his signature Trump steaks, water, and wine, the Republican front-runner echoed his confidence in running away with the Republican nomination and his ability to beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. “We started off with 17. We’re down to 4. They’re pretty much all gone,” Trump said. “There’s only one person who did well tonight, and that’s Donald Trump.”

UPDATE 4, Tuesday, March 8, 9:15 p.m. ET: Here’s a livestream of Trump’s speech from Florida:

UPDATE 3, Tuesday, March 8, 9:04 p.m. ET: With polls closing in Michigan, NBC News and Fox News have called the Republican primary there for Donald Trump, with John Kasich and Ted Cruz battling for second. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, has had a poor showing in both Michigan and Mississippi. Trump will be speaking in Rubio’s backyard in Jupiter, Florida, later tonight.

UPDATE 2, Tuesday, March 8, 8:31 p.m. ET: The networks are reporting that Donald Trump will win the Mississippi primary in what was a two-man race with Sen. Ted Cruz.

UPDATE 1, Tuesday, March 8, 8 p.m. ET: Just as polls closed in Mississippi, the networks are predicting that Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic primary there.

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Live Tuesday Primary Updates: Trump Takes Hawaii

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Donald Trump’s 47 Percent Moment

Mother Jones

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Last week, Mitt Romney, the twice-failed GOP presidential candidate, delivered a speech that blasted Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, calling the tycoon “a phony, a fraud” and citing Trump’s “dishonesty” and his “bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.” It was a clear move on Romney’s part to rally the GOP establishment against the celebrity real estate mogul whose endorsement he warmly embraced during the 2012 campaign. Naturally, Trump responded in kind. Within hours, at a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, he lashed out at Romney.

Trump noted that Romney had “failed horribly” four years ago. He claimed that Romney had begged Trump to endorse him in that race: “I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees.” His audience roared with laughter. And Trump went on:

It was a campaign that should have never been lost. You’re running against a failed president. He came up with the 47 percent. He demeaned 47 percent of the people in our country, right? The famous 47 percent. Once that was said, I’ll be honest, once that was said, a lot of people thought it was over for him.

On Monday, after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) assailed him, Trump returned to this line of attack, tweeting, “Lindsey Graham is all over T.V., much like failed 47% candidate Mitt Romney. These nasty, angry, jealous failures have ZERO credibility!”

In Trump’s view, Romney lost partly due to the infamous remarks, reported by Mother Jones, in which Romney said at a private fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans “believe that they are victims…that government has a responsibility to care for them…that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.” Romney noted that these people do not pay income taxes and do not “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” His comments indicted nearly half of the nation as moochers and freeloaders who do not contribute to society.

For Trump, that insult helped doom Romney’s campaign. But last year, Trump voiced a strikingly similar sentiment. During a June 2015 one-on-one interview on Fox News, host Sean Hannity asked Trump if he, as president, could get 50 million Americans out of poverty. Of course, Trump said, and he added:

I would create incentives for people to work. People don’t have an incentive. They make more money by sitting there doing nothing than they make if they have a job. We have to create incentives that they actually do much better by working. Right now they have a disincentive. They have an incentive not to work.

This was a routine conservative contention: Assistance programs cause people not to work. And Hannity pressed Trump: Would he insist that recipients of food stamps, welfare, and other government assistance “have to work for it?” Trump replied that this could be necessary, and he remarked that Bill Clinton had pushed such a approach with welfare reform. Then Trump made a broader point:

The problem we have right now—we have a society that sits back and says we don’t have to do anything. Eventually, the 50 percent cannot carry—and it’s unfair to them—but cannot carry the other 50 percent.

So one half of the nation is carrying the other half, and the attitude of those in the latter half is, “we don’t have to do anything.” This is darn close to Romney’s 47 percent analysis, but 3 percentage points greater. Trump was depicting 50 percent of Americans as people seeking a free ride.

Both Romney’s and Trump’s comments hail back to a right-wing talking point—this is a country of takers and makers—that distorts actual statistics. In 2011, 46.4 percent of US households did not pay federal income taxes. (The number was higher that year than the usual 40 percent or so, due to the recession that hit during the Bush-Cheney years.) This is the stat that Romney had obviously had in mind. The problem comes—the demeaning, as Trump would put it—when folks who do not pay income taxes are equated with lazy ne’er-do-wells merely angling for a handout. That’s not what the numbers show. In 2011, 60 percent of those who didn’t pay income taxes did pay taxes for Social Security and Medicare. These people essentially did not make enough money to qualify for the income tax. Another 22 percent of the people who didn’t pay income taxes were retirees. Only 8 percent of US households paid no federal taxes at all. According to a Washington Post analysis, that was “usually because they’re either unemployed or on disability or students or are very poor.”

So many of the those who didn’t pay income taxes are working and paying some form of tax, and many others within this group—pensioners and poor people—shouldn’t be expected to pay income taxes. These people are not shirkers who say, “We don’t have to do anything.”

But Trump, like Romney, seems to believe the country is indeed equally split between strivers and loafers. And last year Trump had no reluctance in demeaning 50 percent, not 47 percent.

His comment, not surprisingly, didn’t cause a stir. He’s been spraying a fire hose of outrageous remarks since he entered the presidential race, and this one got lost in the wash. It’s also a statement fully in sync with his arrogant schtick that divides the world into winners and losers. Though he’s now blasting Romney for the original 47 percent insult to Americans, Trump, too, apparently views many Americans as parasites. The only difference is that his estimate is higher.

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Donald Trump’s 47 Percent Moment

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John Oliver Slams Donald Trump and GOP Rivals for Reducing Election to Dick-Measuring Contest

Mother Jones

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Judging by Donald Trump’s sweeping victories on Super Tuesday, Republican voters have decidedly ignored John Oliver’s plea to #MakeDonaldDrumpfagain and are on track to nominate the “serial liar” for president—at least for the time being.

But that doesn’t mean the “Last Week Tonight” host is done skewering Trump or his GOP rivals, especially after last week’s vulgar debate in Detroit, in which the real estate magnate boasted about the size of his penis on national television.

“That’s right, Donald Trump just talked about his dick during a presidential debate,” Oliver said. “A dick which I presume looks like a Cheeto with the cheese dust rubbed off.”

He then played audio excerpts of Trump’s ex-wife’s equally cringe-worthy romance novel, read by Morgan Fairchild.

As Oliver declared last night, welcome to “Clowntown Fuck-The-World Shitshow 2016.”

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John Oliver Slams Donald Trump and GOP Rivals for Reducing Election to Dick-Measuring Contest

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GOP debate near Flint barely mentions Flint

GOP debate near Flint barely mentions Flint

By on 4 Mar 2016commentsShare

Thursday evening’s GOP debate had plenty of head-scratching moments — Donald Trump talking about the size of his “hands” comes to mind, as does John Kasich pleading for tolerance while defending homophobic wedding planners. But perhaps the strangest aspect of the debate is that while the debate was in Detroit, only 70 miles from Flint, there was barely a mention of the lead-in-water crisis. It didn’t come up until nearly 90 minutes in, and when it did, it was with a single question posed to Marco Rubio.

“Senator Rubio,” said Fox News moderator Bret Baier, “Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have both been to Flint. … Without getting into the political blame game here, where are the national Republicans’ plans on infrastructure and solving problems like this? If you talk to people in this state, they are really concerned about Flint on both sides of the aisle. So why haven’t GOP candidates done more or talked more about this?”

Rubio, who, until six weeks ago seemed to think the Flint Water Crisis was the name of a metal band, had no good answer.

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“What happened in Flint was a terrible thing,” Rubio said. “It was a systemic failure at every level of government.” He then praised Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s handling of the water crisis — which is odd because, while Snyder probably didn’t leach lead into the city water supply himself, he did appoint the emergency city manager who made the call to change Flint’s water source, which kickstarted the disaster. Snyder and Michigan officials then ignored complaints from Flint residents about the quality of their water for over a year while children were poisoned by their own drinking water. Rubio, however, had high praise for the governor, who, he said, was taking “responsibility” for what happened.

The Florida senator then pivoted, blaming Democrats for “politicizing” the issue. “But here’s the point,” Rubio said, “this should not be a partisan issue. The way the Democrats have tried to turn this into a partisan issue, that somehow Republicans woke up in the morning and decided, ‘Oh, it’s a good idea to poison some kids with lead.’ It’s absurd. It’s outrageous. It isn’t true.”

So he says.

At that, the party moved on. There were more important things to discuss at the 11th GOP debate that our nation’s crumbling infrastructure: The size of Donald Trump’s penis, the value of his fake university, and wether or not the losing candidates will support Trump if he wins. They all said they would.

As for Flint, they said not a word.

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GOP debate near Flint barely mentions Flint

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Rubio Makes Fun of Trump for Spelling "Choker" Correctly

Mother Jones

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At a campaign rally on Friday morning, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida took out his phone and read from Donald Trump’s Twitter account, hoping to mock the GOP front-runner. Things did not go according to plan.

Rubio made fun of Trump’s spelling of the word “choker”—except that Trump’s tweet, as Rubio read it, spelled the word correctly. “He spelled choker C-H-O-K-E-R,” Rubio said. “Chocker.”

Trump did misspell the word in an earlier tweet, which he deleted.

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Rubio Makes Fun of Trump for Spelling "Choker" Correctly

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Donald Trump Really Doesn’t Understand How Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood Works

Mother Jones

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During Thursday’s CNN-Telemundo GOP debate, frontrunner Donald Trump strayed from his colleagues on the campaign trail by saying some nice things about Planned Parenthood.

“Millions and millions of women, cervical cancer, breast cancer, are helped by Planned Parenthood,” he said. “So you can say whatever you want but they have millions of women going through Planned Parenthood that are helped greatly.”

He’s made similar points before. “They do some very good work,” Trump said of Planned Parenthood on Sunday’s Meet the Press. “Cervical cancer, lots of women’s issue, women’s health issues are taken care of.”

But throughout the campaign, Trump has said—and he reiterated this point at Thursday’s debate—that as long as Planned Parenthood continues to provide abortions, he would defund the women’s health provider as a show of his pro-life bonafides.

“I would defund it because of the abortion factor, which they say is 3 percent. I don’t know what percentage it is,” he said at Thursday’s debate in Texas. “But I would defund it, because I’m pro-life.”

But here’s the thing about Trump’s pro-life pledge: The federal Hyde Amendment already prohibits the use of federal funding for abortions, except for those performed in cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is at risk. This amendment has been attached to federal appropriations bills regularly since the 1970s. Planned Parenthood receives virtually no federal funds to provide abortions. It’s that simple.

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Donald Trump Really Doesn’t Understand How Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood Works

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Jeb Bush Drops Out of the Race for the GOP Presidential Nomination

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush is out. After disappointing finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire, and now South Carolina, the former Florida governor announced Saturday evening that he is ending his run for the GOP presidential nomination.

“Tonight I am suspending my campaign,” said an emotional and tired-looking Bush. “Yeah, I am,” he confirmed, after a few people in the crowd shouted, “No!”

“In this campaign I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds,” he said. “Ideas matter, policy matters.”

To his fellow GOP contenders, Bush congratulated the candidates still “on the island.” Bush, who has taken an aggressive stance recently against front-runner Donald Trump, did not take this opportunity to attack the business mogul.

Bush’s debate performances steadily improved throughout the campaign, particularly when he began to take on Trump. But that failed to give his sagging campaign the lift it needed. Bush came in sixth place in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire, and is at the back of the pack in South Carolina, far behind Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. For weeks, the press has noted the sad tone of Bush’s struggling campaign. Tonight, it’s finally over.

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Jeb Bush Drops Out of the Race for the GOP Presidential Nomination

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This Is the Most Damning and Acccurate Summary of This Week’s GOP Debate We’ve Seen So Far

Mother Jones

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If you missed this week’s Republican debate hosted by CNN in Las Vegas, don’t worry. Our friends at Fusion have produced this highlights reel that pretty much sums up all the war-mongering and terror-posturing you could possibly stomach. Watch the chest-thumping as they promise such tough actions as carpet bombing (Cruz), and closing down the internet (Trump):

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GOP Debate Summary

Didn’t watch the #GOPDebate last night? Here’s what you missed.

Posted by Fusion on Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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This Is the Most Damning and Acccurate Summary of This Week’s GOP Debate We’ve Seen So Far

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What If Getting a Gun Were as Hard as Getting an Abortion?

Mother Jones

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After multiple shootings across the country in the past week, including a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 people, a Missouri state lawmaker decided to take a provocative approach toward gun control. State Rep. Stacey Newman, a Democrat, prefiled a bill this week for the next legislative session that, if passed, would subject potential gun buyers to the same rigmarole of restrictions—a 72-hour waiting period, an explanatory video, a doctor meeting, a facility tour, reviews of photographs, and more—that are already imposed on or have been proposed for Missouri women seeking abortions.

From the bill, HB 1397:

Prior to any firearm purchase in this state, a prospective firearm purchaser shall, at least seventy-two hours prior to the initial request to purchase a firearm from a licensed firearm dealer located at least one hundred twenty miles from such purchaser’s legal residence, confer and discuss with a licensed physician the indicators and contraindicators and risk factors, including any physical, psychological, or situational factors, that may arise with the proposed firearm purchase. Such physician shall then evaluate the prospective firearm purchaser for such indicators and contraindicators and risk factors and determine if such firearm purchase would increase such purchaser’s risk of experiencing an adverse physical, emotional, or other health reaction.

The bill also requires gun purchasers to watch a 30-minute video about firearm injuries, to tour an emergency trauma center at an urban hospital on a weekend night, when rates of gun-shot victims are high, and to meet with two families who have experienced gun violence and two local faith leaders who have officiated a funeral recently for a child killed by gun violence.

This symbolic bill is reminiscent of the trend that cropped up several years ago, when legislators across the country filed tongue-in-cheek measures proposing restrictions on vasectomies corresponding to state abortion restrictions. None of those measures passed, and Newman’s bill is also virtually guaranteed to fail in Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature. Newman’s intent is to highlight the high hurdles to getting an abortion in Missouri relative to the lack of accountability required for buying a gun.

“If we truly insist that Missouri cares about ‘all life’, then we must take immediate steps to address our major cities rising rates of gun violence,'” Newman told St. Louis magazine. “Popular proposals among voters, including universal background checks and restricting weapons from abuser and convicted felons, are consistently ignored each session. Since restrictive policies regarding a constitutionally protected medical procedure are the GOP’s legislative priority each year, it makes sense that their same restrictions apply to those who may commit gun violence.”

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What If Getting a Gun Were as Hard as Getting an Abortion?

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How Come Trump Didn’t Mention Arab Americans Cheering 9/11 in This Interview Two Days After Attacks?

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump did it again. And then again.

At a rally on Saturday in Birmingham, Alabama, the leader in the GOP presidential contest claimed that on September 11, 2001, “I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.” Clearly, he meant thousands of Arab and Muslim Americans. Quickly he was challenged on this point—local police denied any such event had happened, no one could find news video of it, and various observers pointed out that this story was a specious internet rumor. Yet on Sunday on ABC News’ This Week, Trump stuck to his claim in an interview with George Stephanopoulos:

There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down—as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.

In other words, Trump saw something that did not occur. And the fact-checkers pounced. Politifact.com awarded Trump a “Pants on Fire” rating for peddling this false anecdote. The Washington Post hit him with four Pinocchios—the lowest (or highest) mark a politician can receive for lying—for his “outrageous claim,” and it noted, “Trump has already earned more Four-Pinocchio ratings than any other candidate this year.”

It’s hard to figure out what this episode says about Trump. Is he delusional? Is he merely unable to admit any error? (Trumpites and other conservatives often respond to accusations of GOP fabrications by noting that Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign told a false story about landing in Bosnia in 1996 and coming under sniper fire. At least, Clinton, after being called out on this, acknowledged she had committed a “mistake.”) Or is Trump consciously making stuff up to play to nativist GOP voters? As two GOP strategists working against Trump noted in a recent memo, “Trump voters are exceedingly low-information voters. They do not read The Washington Post or Politico or even conservative blogs. They do not watch cable news rigorously.” To put it less politely, Trump voters are susceptible to his BS that reinforces their own assumptions and biases.

But if Trump really did see thousands of Americans cheering the traumatic demise of the World Trade Towers and the horrific deaths of thousands of their fellow citizens—which, of course, he did not—this did not seem to affect him greatly at the time. Two days after 9/11, Trump granted an interview to a German television station. With the smoke still rising from the remains, Trump was…well, completely sane. He described the horrors he had seen at Ground Zero. He noted that he was sending over 200 workers to help with the removal and rescue operation underway. He called for the rebuilding of a “majestic” project on the site. And when asked how the United States ought to respond, Trump calmly replied, “I think they have to respond quickly and effectively. They have to find out exactly what the cause was, who did it. And they have to go after these people because there is no other choice.”

You can watch here:

Notice what’s missing from Trump’s reaction? He says nothing about witnessing thousands of Americans celebrating the attack. True, he wasn’t asked directly about this. But had he actually seen such activity, he could have been expected to be seething about it, and he certainly did not bring it up here.

All of this is a reminder that once upon a time Trump was merely an arrogant, bombastic, celebrity real estate magnate, not a loony arrogant, bombastic, celebrity real estate magnate. Yet now he routinely says crazy crap that isn’t true and doubles or triples down when challenged. And sorry, fact-checkers, but so far none of this appears to register with his “low-information” fans. This fabulist remains the Republican front-runner.

(h/t @KatieAnnieOakly)

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How Come Trump Didn’t Mention Arab Americans Cheering 9/11 in This Interview Two Days After Attacks?

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