So, yesterday, Donald Trump went on a nasty tirade against the media, because they were asking him very straightforward questions about his charitable donations to veterans groups. This followed a similar nasty tirade against US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing the class-action civil lawsuit brought against Trump University, alleging fraud.
"We're in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by Barack Obama," Trump told a campaign rally on the same day as a hearing was held in San Diego over his online real estate school, which closed in 2010. "I mean frankly, he should recuse himself because he's given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative."For the record: "The trial was postponed until November, after the presidential campaign ends." It's pretty rich to be complaining about being treated unfairly when your trial is postponed so it won't affect your presidential campaign.
U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel "happens to be, we believe Mexican, which is great. I think that's fine," Trump added of the judge, who was born in East Chicago, Indiana.
But he's "not doing the right thing," Trump told the rally.
"I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater, he's a hater," he continued. "I'm getting railroaded by a legal system that frankly they should be ashamed."
..."I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it's a disgrace that he's doing this and I look forward to going before a jury not this judge, a jury, and we will win that trial."
...It wasn't Trump's first public attack on the judge. In February, Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press" that Curiel was being "extremely unfair" and argued Curiel was biased against him because of the wall he has proposed building along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Because of the wall and because of everything that's going on with Mexico … this is a judge who I believe has treated me very, very unfairly," Trump said.
And it's remarkably bigoted to accuse a judge of being incapable of impartiality because of his ethnicity. Perhaps the reason Judge Curiel has delivered "negative" rulings (which are certainly not "negative" from the perspective of the people who brought the suit) is because Trump University was a disgusting fraud.
In blunt testimony revealed on Tuesday, former managers of Trump University, the for-profit school started by Donald J. Trump, portray it as an unscrupulous business that relied on high-pressure sales tactics, employed unqualified instructors, made deceptive claims and exploited vulnerable students willing to pay tens of thousands for Mr. Trump's insights.Trump's big defense is that it's just a couple of disgruntled former employees and just a few people who are mad that they didn't have the chops to use the tremendous tools he gave them to get rich. Everyone's just out to get him, and the judge is a Mexican who's angry about the beautiful, tall wall he wants to build.
One sales manager for Trump University, Ronald Schnackenberg, recounted how he was reprimanded for not pushing a financially struggling couple hard enough to sign up for a $35,000 real estate class, despite his conclusion that it would endanger their economic future. He watched with disgust, he said, as a fellow Trump University salesman persuaded the couple to purchase the class anyway.
"I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme," Mr. Schnackenberg wrote in his testimony, "and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money."
...Jason Nicholas, a sales executive at Trump University, recalled a deceptive pitch used to lure students — that Mr. Trump would be "actively involved" in their education. "This was not true," Mr. Nicholas testified, saying Mr. Trump was hardly involved at all. Trump University, Mr. Nicholas concluded, was "a facade, a total lie."
Sure. Just like the media are sleazebags who are unfair to him, despite the fact that he gets less negative coverage than Hillary Clinton, and that "Last week, none of the three major cable news networks—CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC—carried Mrs. Clinton's speech to a workers' union in Las Vegas, where she debuted sharp new attack lines against Mr. Trump. Instead, each chose to broadcast a live feed of an empty podium in North Dakota, on a stage where Mr. Trump was about to speak."
Everyone is so super unfair to Donald Trump.
This is a terrifying resistance to accountability. And we should very, very concerned about a man running for president who has zero compunction about trying to intimidate the press and the judiciary for doing their jobs, when he doesn't like the results.
Everyone in the United States who values our democracy, no matter how fucked up and in need of repair it may be, must do everything they can to stop this guy getting elected. Never Trump. Never.
UPDATE: And here's me at BNR: Donald Trump Orchestrates Major Scam Operation—Oh, and Trump University, Too.
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