Fact Check: Melania Trump's parents came to U.S. through process Donald Trump tried to curb

Nur Ibrahim
Thu, July 24, 2025 


Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images


Claim:

First lady Melania Trump’s parents came to the United States through a family-based sponsorship, also referred to derogatorily as “chain migration.”

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Rating: True

Since U.S. President Donald Trump's first administration, many have speculated about first lady Melania Trump's parents' immigration statuses and how they came to the United States. A number of online posts claimed they arrived through a process that Trump himself has derided and tried to curb.

A July 2025 YouTube video claimed the following:


Donald Trump built a movement on immigration cruelty — cages, deportations, and raids. But behind the scenes, he used the same "chain migration" he demonized to import his entire in-law family while brown kids were ripped from their parents and locked in cages.

During his first administration, Trump did indeed try to curb the practice of so-called "chain migration," calling it a threat to national security. And based on Melania Trump's parents' immigration papers and confirmation from their lawyer, it is true that her parents entered the U.S. through the same process Trump tried to end.

As we have reported before, despite the strict guidelines under which relatives are eligible for the process, as well as annual caps on the number of immigrants allowed to enter the country in this manner, Trump has frequently criticized such family reunification visas, calling them "chain migration." These visas allow U.S. citizens to sponsor their parents financially, bring them to the United States, and eventually apply for their family members' permanent residency.

We previously reported in February 2018 that the first lady's parents' immigration status was not a matter of public record, and thus the manner in which they came into the country was unknown. However, federal immigration records revealed in 2024 that her mother, Amalija Knavs, did come to the country through her daughter's sponsorship.


According to Newsweek, in 2024 the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation obtained Knavs' immigration records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request while suing former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to access visa records of Britain's Prince Harry. The Washington Post also requested the records from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after Knavs died in January 2024. We reached out to The Heritage Foundation to access the records and will update the story if we get more information.

The Washington Post confirmed that Knavs was sponsored by an adult child for a green card, and her financial sponsor was listed as "Melania Trump."

Michael Wildes, the immigration lawyer for both of the first lady's parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, had also confirmed their method of immigration to The New York Times in 2018. He said Melania Trump had sponsored her parents for their green cards. When asked if the Knavses obtained citizenship through "chain migration," Wildes said, "I suppose."

Even as Trump derogatorily called such a process "chain migration," Wildes said the term was a "dirtier" way of characterizing such sponsorship that was "a bedrock of our immigration process when it comes to family reunification."

Wildes also confirmed that the couple met the five-year requirement for residency before applying for citizenship.

During his first administration (2017-2021), Trump endorsed the RAISE Act that would have limited priority sponsorship to spouses and minor children and required U.S. citizens to obtain renewable and temporary visas for their parents instead of fast-tracking residencies.

Snopes has previously investigated claims that Melania Trump came to the U.S. "improperly" on an EB-1 "Einstein" visa and self-sponsored herself for a green card as a result. She became a permanent resident in 2001. Melania did indeed receive such a visa and was required to demonstrate "extraordinary abilities" as a model. Successful models have often qualified for such a visa.

Snopes archives contributed to this report.
Sources:

Correal, Annie, and Emily Cochrane. "Melania Trump's Parents Become U.S. Citizens, Using 'Chain Migration' Trump Hates." The New York Times, 9 Aug. 2018. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/nyregion/melania-trumps-parents-become-us-citizens.html. Accessed 22 July 2025.

Garcia, Arturo. "FACT CHECK: Did Melania Trump's Parents Arrive in the U.S. Through 'Chain Migration'?" Snopes, 8 Feb. 2018, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/melania-trump-parents-chain-migration-meme/. Accessed 22 July 2025.

"Melania Trump's Mom's Papers Released in Prince Harry Case." Newsweek, 23 Oct. 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/melania-trump-mom-amalija-knavs-papers-released-prince-harry-visa-1973400. Accessed 22 July 2025.

Rascouët-Paz, Anna. "Inspecting Claim Melania Trump Improperly Came to US on EB-1 'Einstein' Visa." Snopes, 2 Jul. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//news/2025/07/02/melania-trump-einstein-visa/. Accessed 22 July 2025.

Sacchetti, Maria. "Records Confirm Trump's Mother-in-Law Came to U.S. through Process He Derided." The Washington Post, 25 Mar. 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2024/03/25/trump-melania-parents-chain-migration/. Accessed 22 July 2025.

CHAIN MIGRATION TRUMP USED IT

Rep Jody Hice Introduced Bill to End Chain MigrationRep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) has introduced H.R. 891, a bill that would eliminate the extended family visa categories (e.g., married sons and daughters of citizens, etc.)

Donald Trump Says 'Chain Migration' Immigrants 'Are Not the People That We Want'—That Includes Melania's ParentsPresident Trump said chain migration and the visa lottery are "sick, demented laws that have to be changed."

What is 'Chain migration' and why does President Trump want to end it?The U.S. has long favored family-based immigration, but President Trump is now trying to limit how many relatives immigrants can bring with them.

President Trump’s in-laws benefited from chain migration. That’s a good thing. President Trump has long railed against “chain migration” and continues to threaten to end family-preference immigration visas, despite the fact that his in-laws ...

8 times Trump slammed 'chain migration' before it apparently helped wife's parents President Donald Trump has often slammed the so-called "chain migration" process by which Americans help foreign-born relatives gain citizenship.

Source: Melania used 'chain migration' visa Melania Trump used the same so-called "chain migration" visa that the President publicly rails against to get her parents US citizenship, a source tells CNN.

Chain Migration and Legacy Admissions No college would let its alumni choose 61 percent of its incoming classes — so why should we do this with immigration, where the stakes are much higher than ...

Melania Trump’s Parents Ignite Debate Over ‘Chain Migration’The naturalization of Melania Trump's parents last week in a private ceremony in Manhattan led many of our readers to question President Trump's opposition to ...

What “chain migration” really means — and why Donald Trump hates it so much

“Family-based immigration” doesn’t sound as scary — or get at the fear of losing control.

What Is ‘Chain Migration’? Here’s the Controversy Behind It

Chain migration' in the White Hous 

The Myth of Chain Migration 

The White House and its allies are promoting a misleading immigration term with an ugly history 

Explaining 'Chain Migration'

The president wants to put an end to what he calls the nation's "horrible" system of "chain migration." We explain what it means.

Stephen Miller’s family is a product of chain migration, his uncle says
Five myths about chain migration

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is among those who consider the mere phrase offensive, tweeting that it is “a made up term by the hardline anti-immigration crowd” ...

Trump should support 'chain migration,' which his in-laws used to become citizens

Trump denounces the very family-based path to citizenship his in-laws just used to become Americans.

Trump wants to cut family-based immigration. The results would be seismic.

Trump’s presidency is a symbol of the last gasp of white supremacy

Published on June 26, 2020 By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute


When President Donald Trump first began talking about ending “chain migration” in 2017, media outlets pointed out that his own parents-in-law had likely obtained lawful permanent residency through their daughter Melania—a naturalized U.S. citizen. At the same time that Trump was ranting on Twitter, “CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!” his wife’s parents were in the process of becoming U.S. citizens after five years as so-called “green card” holders.
When the coronavirus pandemic was declared, Trump saw his chance to attack immigration policies that reunite families, and in April 2020 he announced a 60-day ban on green cards that impacted people like his parents-in-law were when they lived in their home country of Slovenia. At the time he announced the ban, I was in the process of applying for my own elderly parents to obtain lawful permanent residency in the United States, just as Melania Trump must have done only a few years ago.

Under existing immigration law, U.S. citizens have been able to sponsor their spouses, children, siblings, and parents, to obtain green cards, or permanent residency. Since his presidency began, Trump has wanted to limit that sponsorship to only spouses and children under 21. To that end, he backed the RAISE Act, which would effectively have done through legislation what his unilateral ban accomplished through executive order under cover of the COVID-19 crisis



When the 60-day ban was up in June 2020, Trump extended it to the end of the year and added a number of other visas to the list, including H-1B visas for foreign workers, to match the outlines of the failed RAISE Act. The White House claims that the ban will keep 525,000 foreign workers out of the country and make those jobs available to U.S. workers at a time of mass unemployment. One immigrant advocacy group pointed out that Trump’s ban is designed to favor immigrants from Western Europe.

The ban is the brainchild of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who entered the White House with Trump and is considered to be the “driving force” behind Trump’s racist anti-immigrant agenda. Miller began his job with a wish list of the types of immigration and immigrants he wanted to ban, both undocumented and legal. He is considered the “architect” of the Trump administration’s most cruel policy—separating parents from their young children after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Since 2017, he has been the brains behind Trump’s “Muslim ban,” the restrictions of refugee quotas, the cancelation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and more. Today, under cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump has been busy deporting young immigrant children in violation of the United States’s own anti-trafficking laws.

Miller’s uncle David Glosser wrote about the hypocrisy of his nephew’s agenda, saying that had the United States adopted Miller’s anti-immigrant wish list when his ancestors were escaping the Nazis, the family would have perished. America’s immigration policies have long served white elites like the first lady, but the rest of us have often been deprived of accessing those same policies.

For all of Trump’s talk about prioritizing American workers, he has already carved out exceptions for “any alien seeking to enter the United States to provide temporary labor or services essential to the United States food supply chain.” In other words, there are some jobs that Americans are too good for and that only low-wage immigrant labor will do. The Washington Post pointed out, “So far this year, the Trump administration is approving H-2A visas at a rate 15 percent faster than last year, and it took steps to make it easier for farmers to hire temporary farmworkers even after the pandemic began.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decried Trump’s new ban, saying, “Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back.” Indeed, at a time when health care workers especially are in short supply, and more than 15 percent of all doctors and nurses nationwide are immigrants, it is unclear how a ban on H-1B visas that limit such workers into the country until December will help Americans. Jobless Americans are hardly going to rush to medical and nursing schools, incur huge debts, fast-track their degrees at an unheard-of rate, and emerge as fully-fledged professionals in time to handle the expected surge of new COVID-19 cases.

It is also unclear how preventing U.S. citizens like me from bringing my retired elderly parents will help American workers. My parents plan to bring their entire life savings with them to spend on private health insurance and other basic needs until the end of their lives, thereby creating jobs and stimulating the U.S. economy. More importantly, they will be able to spend the golden years of their lives with their daughter and family, instead of alone and isolated. But to Trump, my parents do not deserve the same treatment as his in-laws did.

As the immigrant advocacy group Value Our Families declared recently, “Immigration is not just about the economy. Our system is designed to unify family members and is a legal right for many Americans.” Trump has trampled over that right and the rights of so many people over and over since he took office. His trampling of rights is precisely why millions of Americans—comprising a minority, albeit a significant one—voted for him in 2016 and plan to vote for him a second time. Trump did not come into office in spite of demonizing immigrants—he was elected because he repeatedly dehumanized non-Americans, particularly brown-skinned ones. He brought with him Steven Bannon, a man who said he was a fan of The Camp of the Saints, a horrendously racist tome written by the late French author Jean Raspail, that depicted ugly caricatures of Indian immigrant hordes destroying the European way of life.

Trump’s presidency is a clear symbol of the last gasp of white supremacy angrily asserting its power over a country that, in spite of centuries of institutional policies designed to privilege whites, is becoming browner every year. As someone who spent the last 30 years of my life navigating the intricacies and obstacles of the U.S. legal immigration system, I am one of the relatively privileged ones, especially when compared to the traumatized undocumented children who have been separated from their desperate parents, or the refugees fleeing violence whose legal right to seek asylum has been decimated. And yet today, even I remain separated from my parents.

Trump’s unilateral ban on green cards and immigrant work visas upends congressional legislative oversight. California Representative Judy Chu (who happens to be my representative) last year introduced the Reuniting Families Act to streamline legal immigration pathways and make them more humane. So far the bill has 78 sponsors.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court, which far too often tilts rightward, slapped back against the president’s egregious attacks on DACA registrants. In a 5-4 decision on June 18, justices voted to keep the Obama-era program intact, offering some measure of relief to the 650,000 young immigrants who have been able to defer deportation and legally work in the United States. Justice Sonia Sotomayor correctly pointed out that Trump’s decision to cancel DACA was marked by “impermissible discriminatory animus.”

Trump has expressed such “discriminatory animus” to non-white Americans since the beginning of his candidacy and presidential tenure. Through his anti-immigrant policies, he is keeping families like mine separated. He has made no secret that his goal is to preserve white domination in America, and it is for that reason he has enjoyed the fervent, irrational, cult-like following of millions of Americans terrified at the prospect of equality with non-whites.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

#FIREDEVOS
DeVos blasts school districts that hesitate at reopening

The Trump administration says local decisions closed schools, not federal health experts.


Education Secretary,  Betsy DeVos. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

BILLIONAIRE FAMILY, RIGHT WING CALVINISTS,

REFORM CHURCH, DEVRY INSTITUTE, PROMOTER OF PUBLIC

FUNDING FOR PRIVATE AND RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS, PROMOTES CHARTER SCHOOLS ON THE TAXPAYERS BUCK

By NICOLE GAUDIANO

07/07/2020

President Donald Trump in a ramped-up push to reopen schools vowed Tuesday to “put pressure” on reluctant governors, while Education Secretary Betsy DeVos blasted education leaders who won’t accept risk and “gave up and didn’t try” to launch summer instruction.

But the result was intensifying tensions with teachers unions and leading school groups, including the PTA, which charged that the Trump administration in a "vacuum of leadership" has "zero credibility in the minds of educators and parents when it comes to this major decision." The dispute leaves the White House deeply at odds with many involved in making major decisions in the next few weeks about reopening schools.

The White House devoted most of the day to its suddenly energized drive to reopen schools that shuttered during the pandemic, insisting it’s OK to move ahead and that decisions last spring to close down came from states rather than health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The meetings and speeches appeared to hinge on a bet by the administration that parents are worried about the virus but still want their kids back in school, and would respond to broadsides aimed at school leaders and politicians


DeVos, who has been criticized for standing on the sidelines during the crisis, took a tough tone. During a call with governors, DeVos slammed the Fairfax, Va., district for its distance learning “disaster” in the spring and offering a choice of only zero or two days of in-person instruction moving forward, according to notes of a call, led by Vice President Mike Pence, with governors obtained by POLITICO. Earlier in the pandemic, DeVos had been more open to kids learning both online and during in-person classes.

“Education leaders need to examine real data and weigh risk. … Risk is involved in everything we do, from learning to ride a bike to riding a rocket into space and everything in between,” she said.

But a statement Tuesday night from teachers unions, the PTA, special education administrators and secondary school principals indicated that their relationship with the White House has hit a new low.

"Throughout this pandemic, the administration has failed to address the needs of students, especially those students who need the most support. They have failed to listen to families and public school educators who have been on the frontlines serving their communities," the statement read.

"Public school educators, students and parents must have a voice in critical conversations and decisions on reopening schools. The president should not be brazenly making these decisions."

Trump and DeVos praised Florida’s new reopening plan, which orders the state’s public schools to reopen in August for at least five days per week for all students. "We will put out the fires as they come up, but we have to open our schools,” Trump said, and he decried “political statements” that will keep schools closed.

“They think it's going to be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed. No way,” he said during a roundtable discussion at the White House. “So we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open. And it's very important. It's very important for our country. It's very important for the well-being of the student and the parents.”

Trump had tweeted on Monday: "Corrupt Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to open schools in the Fall for political reasons, not for health reasons! They think it will help them in November. Wrong, the people get it!"

The push to reopen comes as parents agonize over whether it will be safe to send their kids back to school this fall and districts wrestle with whether and how to conduct classes. The reopening of schools is vital not just to getting the economy going, but to Trump’s reelection prospects. The campaign may be banking on the issue as a way to revive his appeal among disaffected suburban women, whose support will be key.

The Trump campaign is also seizing on former Vice President Joe Biden's support of teachers unions that are stalwarts of Democratic politics and challenging Biden’s commitment to helping parents get their kids back to school. The campaign’s “question of the day” on Tuesday for the presumptive Democratic nominee is “Will you side with union bosses who want to keep schools closed or parents who want their kids to keep learning?"

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar backed up DeVos, saying parents should expect schools to deliver a safe learning environment for their children, even during a pandemic.

“We must reopen,” he said during a White House event on reopening schools. “We’ve got to get people back to work, back to school, back to health care, because we can't stay locked in our homes forever. It's bad for our physical and mental and emotional health — us as adults, as well as for our kids.”

But Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, said "the reality is no one should listen to Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos when it comes to what is best for students."

After Trump tweeted, “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!,” García fired back on Monday, “You forgot to add the word ‘SAFELY.’” Biden, speaking to the NEA on Friday, pledged his administration will have a "teacher-oriented" Department of Education.

Meanwhile, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten tweeted on Tuesday that, to minimize the risk of spreading Covid-19, schools need "double the staff and double the space to teach in person. But with state budgets facing massive cuts as a result of the pandemic, we need federal funding to #ReopenSafely," she wrote.

The White House hosted events throughout Tuesday on safely reopening, culminating with the roundtable discussion with Trump, first lady Melania Trump, administration officials and teachers, administrators and students from around the country. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wrote an op-ed published in USA Today advocating liability protections for schools in any upcoming emergency relief package and underlining GOP support for helping parents with child care problems.

Last spring, DeVos, in a slight departure from Trump, suggested through a spokesperson that schools may have to stick with virtual learning if they’re not ready to fully reopen. But on Tuesday, during the panel discussion at the White House, she praised Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran for issuing a “very comprehensive” plan to reopen in August for at least five days per week for all students.

“There may be other states and other communities that want to look at that, but again, with the expectation that students are together and that families will be able to count on a five-day school week if that’s the right answer for them,” she said.

During the later panel discussion with Trump, DeVos said too many students "were trapped in schools that don't meet their needs" even before the virus, and that this is the time to reopen and rethink education — a common refrain for the school choice advocate.

"This moment demands actions," she said. "Not excuse-making or fearmongering."

The White House is leaning on CDC reopening guidance and a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics that details the importance of in-person learning and “strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.”

CDC Director Robert Redfield said during another White House panel discussion that reopening plans should minimize the risk of Covid-19 while providing students the critical services, academic resources, and social and emotional support they need. And plans should anticipate that Covid cases "will in fact occur."

"The CDC encourages all schools, all schools to do what they need to reopen," he said, adding that the agency’s guidance viewed as a recommendation to reopen. "Nothing would cause me greater sadness than to see any school district or school use our guidance as a reason not to reopen."

Melania Has Been Secretly Working With Putin for Months

SHE IS FLUENT IN RUSSIAN, TRUMP'S PEACE ENVOY WITKOFF ISN'T

Sarah Ewall-Wice
Fri, October 10, 2025 at 10:36 AM MDT


First Lady Melania Trump made a rare formal announcement from the White House on Friday where she revealed that she has been engaged in secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The first lady said that due to ongoing efforts eight children separated during the war in Ukraine have now been reunited with their families, and she said the work continues.

Trump said that her dialogue with Putin has been ongoing since she sent him a letter in August. The president first revealed the letter she had written to the Russian leader on Truth Social, which was hand-delivered to Putin during his summit with Trump in Alaska.

First lady Melania Trump announced at the White House on October 10, 2025 that she has been engaging in communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin to help reunite Ukrainian children separated from their families by the war in Ukraine. / Kevin Dietsch / Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesMore

“Since President Putin received my letter last August, he responded in writing, signaling a willingness to engage with me directly, and outlining details regarding the Ukrainian children residing in Russia,” the first lady said Friday.

“Since then, President Putin and I have had an open channel of communications regarding the welfare of these children,” she continued.

Trump said that for the past three months, both the U.S. and Russia participated in several back-channel meetings and calls.

“We have agreed to cooperate with each other for the benefit of all people involved in this war,” Trump said. “My representative has been working directly with President Putin’s team.”

First Lady Melania Trump, pictured with her husband on October 5, has been quietly advising the president as he pushes for a peace deal in Ukraine and engages with Russian President Vladimir Putin. / Alex Wong / Alex Wong/Getty ImagesMore

The first lady, who spends most of her time in New York, made her roughly five-minute speech from a podium at the White House before turning around and exiting the room without taking any questions.

Melania has been a quiet adviser to her husband on the war in Ukraine since he took office. The president has said on numerous occasions that the first lady has been quick to point out to her husband that Putin had not been negotiating with him in good faith as the war dragged on.

The negotiations between the first lady and Russia to successfully reunite the eight children with their families may be one of the few successful outcomes to emerge from the president’s high-stakes meeting with Putin in Anchorage.

Trump said on Friday that of the eight children, three were separated from their parents and displaced to Russia because of frontline fighting, while the other five were separated from their families across borders because of the conflict. The first lady said that the U.S. verified the identities and circumstances of each of the children.

“This is an important initiative for me,” Trump said.

Ukraine has said it has been able to verify Russia has kidnapped nearly 20,000 children since the start of the war, but estimates the true figure is actually much higher. The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale estimated the total was closer to 35,000 in March.

First Lady Melania Trump's letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin was delivered during his summit with President Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska in August. / Wu Xiaoling/Xinhua via Getty Images

In her first letter in August, the first lady wrote to Putin that protecting children would benefit not only Russia but also “will serve humanity itself.”

During her Friday remarks, the first lady said her ongoing mission would be to optimize the flow of information on all children who have been victims of the war and to facilitate the regular reunification of children with their families.

First lady Melania Trump announced at the White House on October 10, 2025 that eight children have been reunited with their families as she has been engaging in communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin to help reunite Ukrainian children separated by the war. / Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesMore

The first lady said that Russia has also agreed to rejoin those who were separated from their families during the three-year war and have since turned 18. She said it remains an ongoing effort and plans are already underway to reunite more children

“I hope peace will come soon. It can begin with our children,” Trump concluded.

It follows the first lady’s attendance at the United Nations General Assembly alongside her husband in New York last month. While there, she met directly with Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, where they discussed those impacted by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Rigged review: shameless – and dangerous – catnip for Trump’s base

Mollie Hemingway says the 2020 election ‘went terribly wrong’. In a divided America, her deeply flawed book will find readers

Rioters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington on 6 January. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP


Lloyd Green

THE GUARDIAN
Sun 17 Oct 2021 

The state of the union is sulfurous. Donald Trump’s defeat did not change that.

More than 80% of Trump and Biden voters think elected officials from the other party “present a clear and present danger to American democracy”. Half of Trump supporters and two-fifths for Biden think secession would be a good idea.

Into the fray leaps Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway with Rigged, 488 pages on “How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections”.

Hemingway’s is an immovable feast. It’s about owning the libs.

“If you believe things went terribly wrong in the 2020 election, well, you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone,” she writes. “But most of all, you’re not wrong.”

In 2015, Hemingway branded Trump a “demagogue with no real solutions”. Now, like so many Republicans, she’s a fan. She discounts Charlottesville, where in August 2017 far-right marchers earned kind words from the president, as a “hoax”. She castigates those who denounce the events of 6 January this year, when Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol.

“People who call the few-hour riot at the Capitol by unarmed protesters an ‘insurrection’ are bad people who are harming the country,” she tweeted in July.

The riot was an attempt to overturn the election. Five people died, a police officer among them. Rigged is catnip for Trump’s base.

“They used Covid to rig an election,” Trump whines, in an interview. “There was nothing I could do.”

He has been singing that song since May 2020. And then there is reality: the administration’s performative nonchalance in the face of Covid undermined Trump’s chances of reelection.

That was understood by his campaign as early as spring 2020. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post, in April Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, warned that Covid could cost the boss re-election.

“We have seen the enemy and it is us,” Fabrizio wrote. “It isn’t [Trump’s] policies that cause the biggest problem, it is voters’ reactions to his temperament and behavior.”

Hemingway looks in other directions, pointing a finger at Democratic lawyers and voters for supposedly gaming the system amid a pandemic, berating Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for pursuing the wrong legal strategies, and ignoring comments by Bill Barr, who she interviews but who as attorney general let Trump know he had not “seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome of the election”.

It’s true that Trump might have mounted more of a fight. His campaign and the GOP had real lawyers on the payroll and Republicans were secretary of state in Arizona and Georgia. But the party had squandered the advantages of incumbency.

Trump and Hemingway both go at Silicon Valley with a vengeance, reserving a special place in hell for Mark Zuckerberg.

“Big tech got meaner, bigger, stronger, and they were crazed,” Trump says. As for Zuckerberg, he “should be in jail”. One suspects many Americans might agree.

Hemingway criticizes the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) for funding election operations in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. She contends that such private-public partnerships undermine the public’s faith in electoral integrity.

For the record, courts repeatedly denied pre-election efforts to block CTCL funding. One federal judge, William C Griesbach, a George W Bush appointee, acknowledged the “receipt of private funds for public elections may give an appearance of impropriety” – but dismissed the lawsuit.

Hemingway does not examine Team Trump’s own relationship with Facebook and Zuckerberg. In 2014, Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct company part-owned by the Mercer family, Trump benefactors, used Facebook to illegally harvest personal data. Steve Bannon, who would become Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, was a board member and officer. He denies personal culpability.

There’s more that Hemingway leaves untouched. According to The Contrarian, a recent book by Max Chafkin of Bloomberg News, in a 2019 meeting between Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and Trump ally, Zuckerberg basically agreed to champion “state-sanctioned conservatism”. Zuckerberg has called the claim “pretty ridiculous”. Thiel, an original Facebook investor, still sits on the board.

It doesn’t end there. A recent lawsuit commenced by the Rhode Island Retirement System against Facebook, Zuckerberg, Thiel and his company, Palantir, alleges “significant damage” caused by the data-harvesting scandal. The suit quotes the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, in alleging that Palantir employees “regularly worked in person, during normal business hours, at the offices of Cambridge Analytica in London”.

Back on the page, it seems Hemingway cannot resist the siren song of race. In Justice on Trial, her last book, about the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, she rubbished the legal underpinnings of Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 supreme court ruling that made state-imposed school segregation unconstitutional.

Such decisions, she wrote, “may have been correct in their result but were decided on the basis of sociological studies rather than legal principles”.

It’s a unique take, with which even Trump’s three supreme court picks would not agree. Amy Coney Barrett has called Brown a “super-precedent … unthinkable” to overrule. Kavanaugh has said the same. Neil Gorsuch concedes it was properly decided.

Undeterred, Hemingway now takes aim at the 1964 Civil Rights Act, resurrecting Barry Goldwater’s contention that it evinced “an unconstitutional usurpation of power by the federal government”. Hemingway also derides Lyndon Johnson’s support for civil rights as a blatant appeal to black voters.

In 1964, Senator Goldwater lost to Johnson in a landslide. That was the last time a Democrat accomplished that feat – or won the “white vote”, for that matter.

The news remains a battleground. Ryan Williams, president of the rightwing Claremont Institute, has made it known his mission is to save western civilization.

“We believe in truth and reason,” he recently told the Atlantic. “The question is whose truth and whose reason.”

Williams also said “a third of the country thinks the election was given to Biden fraudulently”. Hemingway is sure to find an audience.


Rigged is published in the US by Regnery

Stephanie Grisham: Trump turncoat who may be most damaging yet

Former press secretary has decided to ‘break her silence’ but may find media less hospitable than to those who went before

Stephanie Grisham looks on at the White House, in November 2019. 

Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuter

Martin Pengelly
@MartinPengelly
Sun 3 Oct 2021 

On Monday, Stephanie Grisham will appear on Good Morning America. ABC is billing the interview as the former White House press secretary’s chance to “break her silence”.

I’ll Take Your Questions Now review: Stephanie Grisham’s tawdry Trump tell-all

Donald Trump is unlikely to be watching. Grisham is not the first insider to break omertà on the Trumps, who rose from running a New York real estate empire to occupying the White House, but she may well be the politico who got closest of all.

A Republican operative before Trump seized the party, Grisham was spokeswoman and confidante to Melania Trump when she became first lady. Grisham shifted to the West Wing, becoming Trump’s third press secretary, then returned to the East Wing as Melania’s chief of staff. Shortly before the Trumps left the White House, on the day of the Capitol attack, she resigned.

Now she has written a book, I’ll Take Your Questions Now. The irony of the title has been widely noted. In nine months as press secretary, Grisham did not take questions at a single White House briefing. Nonetheless, the book has generated a slew of headlines, nearly all unflattering about her former bosses.

Stories range from the salacious, Trump calling a press aide forward on Air Force One in order to “look at her ass”, to the ludicrous, as when Trump and Boris Johnson used a G20 working breakfast to discuss the strength of kangaroos.

Grisham makes clear Trump’s unfitness to be president, whether due to his terrifying temper or his ridiculous demands – such as when, she says, he ordered her to finally go behind the White House podium, to defend him in his first impeachment by “acting out” his infamous phone call with the president of Ukraine.

Grisham avoided that humiliation, she writes, by getting “one of our most reliable ‘yes’ guys in the House”, Devin Nunes of California, to read the call into the congressional record. She also exposes decay higher up in the party. Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina, is “gross and tacky … a snake”. Mitt Romney, Grisham’s former boss, a pillar of anti-Trump conservatives, is ridiculed for trying to become secretary of state.

Back down the food chain, Grisham does not name the White House aide with whom she had a relationship which ended in allegations of abuse, choosing to describe him as the “Music Man”, who she says could calm Trump down by playing his favourite songs, Memory from the musical Cats chief among them. The aide is widely known to be Max Miller, who denies Grisham’s allegations – and who is now a candidate for Congress in Ohio.

Trumpworld, of course, has lashed back. Peter Navarro, formerly a trade adviser and self-appointed White House enforcer, called Grisham’s book “useless gossip”. Trump claimed Grisham was being “paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things”.

Grisham listens to Trump talk to reporters at the White House. 

Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Harper Collins – owned by Rupert Murdoch – will no doubt press ahead with its sales plan. But Grisham seems to have burned bridges with the mainstream media as well as her political party. Though the Washington Post and New York Times published detailed reports on her book, she seems unlikely to be welcomed into the fold as columnist or TV pundit.

‘Dirty deeds’

Grisham resigned on 6 January, the day Trump supporters mounted a deadly attack on the US Capitol, seeking to overturn the election in support of his lies about voter fraud. She says she rejected the voter fraud argument. Politico has reported otherwise. In most eyes, either way, it was far too late to jump ship.

Eric Boehlert, founder of PressRun, a newsletter covering the US media, told the Guardian Grisham was “a legit inside source who had a position the whole time. So I think there’s a feeling like she was in the room. It’s not like hearsay.”

“[But] she’s sitting in meetings for years, writing notes to herself at night about how the president of the United States is a danger to the world and the danger to the country. If you’re gonna blow the whistle, have the courage to be a whistleblower. Don’t do it after everything is safe and he’s out of office.”

Some Trump aides who jumped or were pushed before Grisham have managed to stay in the media’s good graces, though obviously not the Trumps’.

Michael Cohen was Trump’s fixer before he flipped during the investigation of ties between Trump and Russia. He also went to prison, for crimes including lying to Congress and facilitating illegal payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump.

Finishing his sentence in home confinement, he has become a vocal Trump critic through a book, Disloyal, a podcast, Mea Culpa, and as a voice on MSNBC. It’s quite a change for a man who once threatened journalists threatening to expose Trump’s “dirty deeds”.

John Bolton was Trump’s third national security adviser. A foreign policy hawk on the Republican right long before Trump, his time in the White House wasn’t a happy one, as Grisham recounts. Trump failed to stop publication of Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, but Bolton managed to avoid testifying in Trump’s first impeachment trial. That and his presence as a media commentator, particularly over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, continues to anger many on the left.

Then there is Anthony Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier who spent 11 days as White House communications director. He stuck with Trump for a while, publishing a book in praise of the “Blue Collar President”, then broke with him. “The Mooch” retains a presence in national media.

Boehlert said: “I feel like these books are helpful in that they paint a first-hand portrait of a madman, period. And they’re helpful because they’re effective.”

But in Grisham’s case, he said, “it would have been helpful if [she] had warned us in 2017, 2018 … She had this perk job, she had access to the most elite circles on the planet. And she knew it was all wrong, and she knew it was dangerous. And now she’s cashing in on a book after Trump is in Mar-a-Lago.

“It’s not exactly a profile in courage.”
‘I looked totally incompetent’

As far as Trumpworld is concerned, Grisham’s chief crime may be to have betrayed her access, as chief of staff to Melania and press secretary to Donald, to some of the family’s most intimate moments.

In her book, she describes discovering “another piece of the puzzle that was the marriage of Donald and Melania Trump”. During a trip to France in summer 2017, she says, she stood “mostly alone” with the couple before a public engagement.

Melania Trump climbs into her motorcade wearing the infamous Zara jacket, in Maryland in 2018. 

Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
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“Mrs Trump … leaned into her husband, who whispered into her ear. A few moments later I saw them kiss each other. All of that was quite unusual; it was in fact the only time I ever saw them express any physical intimacy in public.”

Grisham says she was “so surprised I took a picture of the scene on my phone”. That picture, taken from behind, its subjects unsuspecting, is reproduced in Grisham’s book. It seems a startling breach of privacy and trust.


Stephanie Grisham book sheds light on Trump’s bizarre brushes with world leaders

Grisham also tells her version of a particularly furious media frenzy. On a trip to the southern border in June 2018 that included a visit to a detention centre for child migrants separated from their parents, Melania Trump wore a jacket which displayed a slogan: “I really don’t care. Do U?” Outrage was immediate and sustained.

Grisham blames Melania for going rogue, choosing her outfit while her closest aide was distracted. The first lady, she writes, “didn’t care about the media frenzy over her jacket, that’s for sure. Or at least she pretended not to care … But I did care, because it was my job, and, at best, I looked totally incompetent.”

Grisham now lives in Kansas, away from the Washington hullabaloo. Should she ever wish to dive back in, she may hope DC society at large responds as one White House predecessor did to her book.

Joe Lockhart, a press secretary under Bill Clinton, dismissed I’ll Take Your Questions Now in a mere five words.

“I don’t care,” he wrote. “Do you?”

COMMODIFICATION OF ADOLESCENCE 
Facebook exec defends policies toward teens on Instagram
By MARCY GORDON

In this March 20, 2018 file photo, Facebook's head of global safety policy Antigone Davis speaks during a roundtable on cyberbullying with first lady Melania Trump, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Facing lawmakers’ outrage against Facebook over its handling of internal research on harm to teens from Instagram, Davis is telling Congress that the company is working to protect young people on its platforms, on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing outrage over its handling of internal research on harm to teens from Instagram, a Facebook executive is telling Congress that the company is working to protect young people on its platforms. And she disputes the way a recent newspaper story describes what the research shows.

“We have put in place multiple protections to create safe and age-appropriate experiences for people between the ages of 13 and 17,” Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety, said in written testimony Thursday for a Senate Commerce subcommittee.

Facebook has removed more than 600,000 accounts on Instagram from June to August this year that didn’t meet the minimum age requirement of 13, Davis said.

Davis was summoned by the panel as scrutiny over how Facebook handles information that could indicate potential harm for some of its users, especially girls, while publicly downplaying the negative impacts.

The revelations in a report by The Wall Street Journal, based on internal research leaked by a whistleblower at Facebook, have set off a wave of anger from lawmakers, critics of Big Tech, child-development experts and parents. The outcry prompted Facebook to put on hold its work on a kids’ version of Instagram, which the company says is meant mainly for tweens aged 10 to 12. But it’s just a pause.

For some of the Instagram-devoted teens, the peer pressure generated by the visually focused app led to mental-health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts. It was Facebook’s own researchers who alerted the social network giant’s executives to Instagram’s destructive potential.

Davis says in her testimony that Facebook has a history of using its internal research as well as outside experts and groups to inform changes to its apps, with the goal of keeping young people safe on the platforms and ensuring that those who aren’t old enough to use them do not.

“This hearing will examine the toxic effects of Facebook and Instagram on young people and others, and is one of several that will ask tough questions about whether Big Tech companies are knowingly harming people and concealing that knowledge,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chairman of the consumer protection subcommittee, said in a statement. “Revelations about Facebook and others have raised profound questions about what can and should be done to protect people.”

Blumenthal and Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the panel’s senior Republican, also plan to take testimony next week from a Facebook whistleblower, believed to be the person who leaked the Instagram research documents to the Journal.

Despite the well-documented harms, Facebook executives have consistently played down Instagram’s negative side and have forged ahead with work on Instagram for Kids, until now. On Monday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a blog post that the company will use its time out “to work with parents, experts and policymakers to demonstrate the value and need for this product.”

Already in July, Facebook said it was working with parents, experts and policymakers when it introduced safety measures for teens on its main Instagram platform. In fact, the company has been working with experts and other advisers for another product aimed at children — its Messenger Kids app that launched in late 2017.

The focused outrage transcending party and ideology contrasts with lawmakers’ posture toward social media generally, which splits Republicans and Democrats. Republicans accuse Facebook, Google and Twitter, without evidence, of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views.

Democrats train their criticism mainly on hate speech, misinformation and other content on the platforms that can incite violence, keep people from voting or spread falsehoods about the coronavirus.

The bipartisan pile-on against Facebook proceeds as the tech giant awaits a federal judge’s ruling on a revised complaint from the Federal Trade Commission in an epic antitrust case and as it tussles with the Biden administration over its handling of coronavirus vaccine misinformation.

Meanwhile, groundbreaking legislation has advanced in Congress that would curb the market power of Facebook and other tech giants Google, Amazon and Apple — and could force them to untie their dominant platforms from their other lines of business. For Facebook, that could target Instagram, the social media juggernaut valued at around $100 billion that it has owned since 2012, as well as messaging service WhatsApp.

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Follow Marcy Gordon at https://twitter.com/mgordonap

CHAIN MIGRATION

'She's outta here': Joy Reid reveals how Melania may be deported in Trump's plan

WITH HER ANCHOR BABY AND PARENTS

Carl Gibson, AlterNet
July 4, 2025 

Melania Trump (Reuters)

On multiple occasions, President Donald Trump has floated the idea of deporting naturalized U.S. citizens, including during a recent visit to a Florida detention camp for immigrants. But that policy could end up being used against his own family.

That's according to former MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid, who recently interviewed Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on her YouTube podcast. The Daily Beast reported that Jayapal joined Reid to discuss, among other things, Trump's new "Alligator Alcatraz" facility in the Florida Everglades. They both pointed out to listeners that Trump said during his visit to the prison camp earlier this week that even native-born U.S. citizens could one day find themselves in federal custody.

"They’re not new to our country. They’re old to our country. Many of them were born in our country," Trump said. "I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth."

Trump also floated that proposal to El Salvadoran President Nayyib Bukele during visit to the White House in April. NPR reported at the time that Trump said "homegrowns" born in the U.S. could one day be sent to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison, which is notorious for flagrant human rights abuses. Reid said there was nothing theoretically stopping a future administration from targeting Trump's wife and family members.

"If you give the president of the United States monarchical-like powers to say, ‘I don’t like your views, I don’t like your take on issues, I don’t like that you’re too liberal, you’re not conservative enough, I’m just gonna take away your naturalized citizenship,‘ well ... If we ever get a Democratic president, they could say, ‘I don’t like Melania Trump. She wasn’t born here. She was born in Slovenia. She is a naturalized citizen. She’s outta here,'" Reid said.

"And by the way, Ivana Trump, the late Ivana Trump, who’s buried in the golf course in New Jersey in Donald Trump’s golf club, she wasn’t an American citizen. And three of her children are Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka," Reid added. "And maybe the next Democratic president says, ‘You know what? I don’t like the Trumps. And so we’re gonna denaturalize all of the Trump children, whose mother was a foreigner at the time.'"

Trump hasn't yet denaturalized a U.S. citizen, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously suggested that the administration hadn't ruled out a denaturalization investigation into New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to conduct denaturalization proceedings over rap lyrics Mamdani wrote in 2017.

Watch Reid's interview with Jayapal below, or by clicking this link.

Opinion: Donald Trump’s Racist NYC Rally Was Vile. It Was Also Political Suicide

David Rothkopf
Sun, October 27, 2024 a

Brendan McDermid



To all those Republicans who shed crocodile tears because their feelings were so hurt that people were calling Donald Trump a fascist: Stop.

To all the MAGA defenders who said it was over-the-top to compare Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally to that held by the German-American Bund in an earlier incarnation of Madison Square Garden: Shush.

To all those who were falling once again for the bought-and-paid-for narrative that Trump somehow had the momentum going into the final week of campaign 2024: Nope.

On Sunday at MSG, Donald Trump engineered what will be seen by political analysts and later by historians as the coup de grâce that killed forever his prospects of being president and may well have set him on a post-election course on which he finally may be held accountable for his actions.

The interminable rally concluded by an interminable, disjointed, incoherent and yet clearly vile speech by the former president, might have been touted by Trump’s son Don Jr., one of his warm-up acts, as the “King of New York returning to reclaim his crown.” But Trump was never the King of New York. (Sorry, Lara, your father-in-law did not “build” New York. Immigrants did. But we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Trump has always been loathed in New York City, especially in his former home borough of Manhattan where the vote against him was and will be dependably over 80 percent. But if he was hated before, rest assured he will be more despised after tonight.

That was clear early on when Tony Hinchcliffe, a man invited by Trump to give one of the introductory speeches—who in true MAGA fashion alleged without providing a shred of evidence that he was a comedian—offered a KKK buffet of nauseating slurs. He called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

The “joke” was as stupid as it was repulsive because there are almost 600,000 Puerto Ricans in New York City and many more spread across regions of vital importance in the upcoming election. It also happened to come on a day when Vice President Kamala Harris announced her detailed and thoughtful plan for Puerto Rico, an island Trump wanted to trade to Denmark in exchange for Greenland.

But this loser did not stop there. He offered unfunny commentary about his view that Latinos “love making babies” and a reference to how his Black friends liked carving watermelons.

You might think that a few super-racist comments from one speaker might not warrant comments that compared the Trump rally to the Nazi meeting 85 years ago. But his comments were hardly the worst. And the racism and the hate and incitement to violence and the promise of an increasingly authoritarian state continued from the very beginning of the event to the very end.

One speaker said that Harris was managed by “pimp handlers” and said of Democrats that “we need to slaughter these other people.” Disgraced and destitute former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, as did several others, that Democrats were behind attempts to kill Donald Trump. Another speaker called Harris “the devil” and “the antichrist.”

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller, as is his habit, went directly for the Nazi playbook saying, “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Tucker Carlson came out to offer more racist slurs about Harris. Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off while declaring he saw no Nazis in the audience (thus proving that steroid abuse can not only shrivel up your junk but that it’s not really good for your eyesight either).



Elon Musk was there acting strangely and promising to slash the size of the government (except, presumably, the parts that are subsidizing his businesses).

As an aside, it is worth noting the irony of Musk appearing at a rally condemning illegal immigration when recent revelations seem to confirm that he himself was an illegal immigrant. That’s not just hypocrisy. If he lied about any aspect of his citizenship status or journey when filling out the forms required to get the Top Secret clearance that this phone pal of Vladimir Putin has, it’s a felony and could not only cause his clearances to be revoked it could be bad news for his businesses and frankly his ability to stay in the United States. No wonder he is all in for the only “politician” in America who would pardon his crimes in a heartbeat.

Donald Trump speaks at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024 in New York City.

Trump attacked the media, and egged the crowd on to boo journalists in the crowd. He said migrants had taken over Times Square (which is nine blocks uptown from where the rally was held). He called the U.S. an occupied country which, while bad, may be better than his reference to it as a garbage can the other day. He called Harris a “low-IQ individual.” He offered so many lies that cable networks tuned him out because it was impossible to keep up with fact-checking him. He returned to old themes like the bizarre notion that Harris would reinstate the draft and start World War III.

Most importantly from the perspective of confirming his fascism he reiterated at length his assertion that his opponents were “enemies of the people.” (You know the ones against whom he promised to unleash the U.S. military.) He called them “the most sinister and corrupt forces on Earth.”

In other words the entire event, despite its marathon length and hodgepodge of z-list speakers, delivered over and over again a very focused message. The Trump campaign is about retribution and revenge. It is about the white supremacist desire to purge America of all their neighbors of different colors and beliefs. It is about Trump’s desire to seek out his enemies and punish them. And over the course of its Wagnerian length (and resonances) it singled out group after group that would be deported or punished.

From a political perspective the strategy is pure suicide. The rally will almost certainly alienate more voters who might have voted for Trump and it is hard to imagine it has earned him one single new vote. (Unless there is a Franz Liebkind somewhere who has been too busy writing “Springtime for Hitler” to have paid attention to the campaign until now.) It was a play to the base when the biggest problem Trump has in this election is breaking through his rock solid ceiling of around 47 percent of the electorate.

Donald, left, and Melania Trump at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024 in New York City.

But worse still, unlike the Bund rally, Trump’s was not a fringe affair. It was led by a former President of the United States on behalf of very nearly half of the American people.

Its threats of authoritarianism were supported by efforts during the first Trump presidency to sidestep the rule of law and by crimes including a coup attempt we all saw with our own eyes. Its future plans for concentration camps in the U.S. and for mass deportations and the use of the military against the American people have been carefully developed, and there is a plan to put them in place.

That is why Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden was, as it turned out, far more ominous than its predecessor. It should chill Americans to the bone. But, I expect it will do more than that. I believe it will mobilize more voters to take action on Nov. 5 to stop the 21st-century fascism of Trump and MAGA.

Trump’s High-Profile NYC Rally Shrouded by Incendiary Rhetoric

Josh Wingrove
Sun, October 27, 2024 






(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump turned to the home stretch of his campaign with a marathon rally in the heart of Manhattan, flanked by Elon Musk and other allies aiming to frame voters’ decision around who can fix America’s woes.

Trump’s event at the fabled Madison Square Garden, which lasted for nearly six hours Sunday, featured criticisms of Vice President Kamala Harris over the border, crime and the economy. Trump mused about safely Democratic New York flipping to his column, painting a view of an America gripped in crisis.

“We must defeat Kamala Harris and stop the radical left agenda with a landslide that is too big to rig,” Trump said.

He was joined by roughly two dozen speakers, from celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan to House Speaker Mike Johnson to Musk himself, who is campaigning for Trump and pouring money into the race. Some of the speeches included fraught remarks about Puerto Rico, Palestinians and Black Americans.

Musk predicted he could find $2 trillion in cuts in a Trump administration, a massive target that would fundamentally reshape government spending.

“Your money is being wasted,” said Musk, the final speaker aside from Trump and his wife Melania in a rare appearance during the campaign. “We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocket book.”



The event at the iconic venue was intended to command the media spotlight and mobilize the former president’s supporters about a week before Election Day. Trump’s campaign had promised a spectacle, and thousands of people lined up along city streets hours before the rally kicked off shortly around 3 p.m. at the packed arena that has a 20,000-person capacity.

Government Spending

New York isn’t considered a battleground state for a presidential race polls show is close between Trump and Harris, though it has several competitive House races that could decide control of the chamber. Still, the distinctive setting of Madison Square Garden — host to some of the nation’s biggest cultural moments — offered a stage to help the Republican nominee amplify his message beyond his base, including undecided voters.

It was something of a capstone for Trump, who rose to fame in New York only to be shunned by many of its figures as president. It’s also the city where a jury earlier this year found him guilty of 34 felony accounts of falsifying business records.

Trump has said he would ask Musk, the world’s richest person and a major donor to his campaign, to head up an effort to cut government spending, nicknamed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a reference to a cryptocurrency Musk has embraced.

Critics have said this position would represent a conflict of interest for Musk. The companies he runs, including Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, have billions of dollars worth of federal contracts and have benefited from federal spending, including electric vehicle tax credits and infrastructure investments.

Cantor Fitzgerald LP’s Howard Lutnick asked Musk on stage how much he could “rip out of” the budget under President Joe Biden and Harris. Musk responded, “Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion, yeah.”

The $2 trillion target represents nearly a third of existing spending. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, according to the Treasury Department.

Musk has spent at least $132 million to elect Trump and other Republicans in 2024, federal filings show. That level of giving has vaulted him into the upper echelon of political donors, making Musk one of the most prolific contributors of the entire 2024 cycle.

Controversial Speakers

The speeches also included controversial comments that undercut what at other points were messages of national unity from Trump. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, joked that Harris was a trailblazer as the first “Samoan-Malaysian low-IQ” person who could be elected. Harris would actually be the first Black woman and the first Indian-American in the White House.

Several speakers also urged supporters to be sure to vote, to bring people to the polls and to vote early. “You line up like you’re the third monkey in line for the ark, and it’s starting to rain,” Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said.

At the event, Trump unveiled a credit for caregivers who take care of family members. The Republican nominee didn’t provide details or say how he would pay for it. His litany of tax proposals already includes benefits for tipped workers, hourly employees, senior citizens and higher-income residents of Democratic-led states whose tax breaks he took away while president.

Harris has proposed expanding Medicare to cover home care services. She’s also proposed to expand tax credits for parents and boost deductions for startup businesses, offset by increasing levies on corporations and wealthy households.

Trump has said he would raise fresh revenue from across-the-board tariffs, which he aims to impose on imports from US allies and adversaries alike. Economists have warned tariffs won’t offset the price tag of his tax cut ideas and could increase costs on US households.

--With assistance from Amanda Gordon, Dana Hull, Max Chafkin and Stephanie Lai.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

Trump's Madison Square Garden event features crude and racist insults

JILL COLVIN and MICHELLE L. PRICE
Updated Sun, October 27, 2024 

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York.

 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets former first lady Melania Trump during a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Tony Hinchcliffe speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump hosted a rally featuring crude and racist insults at New York’s Madison Square Garden Sunday, turning what his campaign had dubbed as the event where he would deliver his closing message into an illustration of what turns off his critics.

With just over a week before Election Day, speakers labeled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” called Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris “the devil,” and said the woman vying to become the first woman and Black woman president had begun her career as a prostitute.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Tony Hinchcliffe, a stand-up comic whose set also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people, all key constituencies in the election just nine days away.

His joke was immediately criticized by Harris’ campaign as it competes with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Puerto Rican music superstar Bad Bunny backed Harris shortly after Hinchcliffe's appearance.

The normally pugnacious Trump campaign took the rare step of distancing itself from Hinchcliffe. “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign," senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.

But other speakers also made incendiary comments. Trump’s childhood friend David Rem referred to Harris as “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” Businessman Grant Cardone told the crowd that Harris ”and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.”

The marquee event reflected the former president's tone throughout his third White House campaign. Though he refrained from doing so Sunday, Trump often tears into Harris in offensive and personal terms himself, questioning in recent weeks her mental stability and her intelligence as well as calling her “lazy,” long a racist trope used against Black people.

The event was a surreal spectacle that included former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, politicians including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Reps. Byron Donalds and Elise Stefanik, and an artist who painted a picture of Trump hugging the Empire State Building.

And that was all before Trump was to take the stage, running more than two hours late.

After being introduced by his wife, Melania Trump, in a rare public appearance, the former president began by asking the same questions he’s asked at the start of every recent rally: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The crowd responded with a resounding “No!”

“This election is a choice between whether we’ll have four more years of gross incompetence and failure, or whether we’ll begin the greatest years in the history of our country,” he said.

Trump announced a new tax credit for caregivers

Trump on Sunday added a new proposal to his list of tax cuts aimed at winning over older adults and blue-collar workers, which already includes vows to end taxes on Social Security benefits, tips and overtime pay: A tax credit for family caregivers.

This comes after Harris has talked about the “sandwich generation” of adults caring for aging parents while raising their children at the same time. Harris has proposed federal funding to cover home care costs for older Americans.

Trump otherwise repeated familiar lines about foreign policy and immigration, calling for the death penalty for any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen and saying that the day he takes office, “The migrant invasion of our country ends.”

As Trump’s remarks came up on an hour, some of the crowd began trickling out.

Tech mogul Elon Musk, who spoke earlier and introduced Melania Trump, was a prominent part of Trump’s closing campaign message. The former president called Musk “a genius” and “special.”

Musk nodded to Trump's recent plan to allow him to lead a government efficiency commission to audit the entire federal government. Several of Musk's businesses, including Tesla and SpaceX, have major government contracts or have relied on U.S. subsidies, and Musk has faced criticism after reports that he has spoken privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Your money is being wasted and the department of government efficiency is going to fix that," Musk said before taking a place offstage beside Melania Trump.

Many of the speakers Sunday appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention. This time, the same speakers shouted and railed more against Democrats.

Hogan, returning to the venue where he performed years ago as a professional wrestler, seemed to reprise his character, emerging wearing a giant red, orange and yellow boa and violently waving a large American flag as he posed and danced. He spat on the stage during his speech, flexed his muscles repeatedly and told the audience: “Trump is the only man that can fix this country today.”

Trump allies went after Democrats for bringing up a pro-Nazi rally

Some Democrats, calling Trump a fascist, have compared his Sunday event to a pro-Nazi rally at the Garden in February 1939. Several speakers on Sunday ripped Hillary Clinton, the Democrat defeated by Trump eight years ago, for saying recently that Trump would be “reenacting” the 1939 event. One of them, radio host Sid Rosenberg, directed a profanity at Clinton.

“Hey guys, they’re now scrambling and trying to call us Nazis and fascists,” said Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, who draped a sparkly “MAGA” jacket over the lectern as she spoke. “And you know what they’re claiming, guys? It’s very scary. They’re claiming we’re going to go after them and try and put them in jail. Well, ain’t that rich?”

Declared Hogan in his raspy growl: “I don't see no stinkin' Nazis in here.”

Trump has denounced the four criminal indictments brought against him as politically motivated. He has ramped up his denunciations in recent weeks of “enemies from within,” naming domestic political rivals, and suggested he would use the military to go after them. Harris, in turn, has referred to Trump as a fascist.

The arena was full hours before Trump was scheduled to speak. Outside the arena, the sidewalks were overflowing with Trump supporters in red “Make America Great Again” hats. There was a heavy security presence. Streets were blocked off and access to Penn Station was restricted.

“It just goes to show ya that he has a bigger following of any man that has ever lived,” said Philip D’Agostino, a longtime Trump backer from Queens, the borough where Trump grew up.

A New Yorker returns home

Trump has a complicated history with the place where he built his business empire and that made him a tabloid and reality TV star. Its residents indicted him last year on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He was found guilty in that case, and also found liable in civil court for business fraud and sexual abuse.

But Trump has been talking about wanting to hold a rally at the venue dubbed “The World’s Most Famous Arena” since he launched his campaign.

The rally was one of a number of detours Trump has made from battleground states, including a recent rally in Coachella, California, and rallies on the Jersey Shore and in the South Bronx.

While some have dismissed the stops as nothing more than vanity events aimed at boosting Trump’s ego, the rallies guaranteed Trump national coverage that could help him reach the country’s few remaining undecided voters, many of whom don’t get their news from traditional outlets.

New York has not voted for a Republican for president in 40 years. But that hasn't stopped Trump from continuing to insist he believes he can win. New York is also home to a handful of competitive congressional races that could determine which party controls the House next year.

Trump routinely uses his hometown as a foil before audiences in other states, painting a dark vision of the city that bears little resemblance to reality. He’s cast it as crime-ridden and overrun by violent, immigrant gangs who have taken over Fifth and Madison avenues and occupied Times Square


On Sunday, however, Trump was much more complimentary of the city. He said “no city embodies the spirit” and energy of the American people more and talked about attending basketball and hockey games at the Garden.

After Trump concluded his speech after over an hour, opera singer Christopher Macchio came on stage to perform the song “New York, New York.”

Hulk Hogan, Dr. Phil, Elon Musk Speak at Donald Trump’s Insult-Filled Rally at Madison Square Garden

Kimberly Nordyke and The Associated Press
Sun, October 27, 2024 


Hulk Hogan, Dr. Phil McGraw, UFC CEO Dana White and Tesla/SpaceX/X chief Elon Musk spoke in support of Donald Trump at a rally hosted by the Republican presidential candidate on Sunday at New York’s Madison Square Garden that is being criticized for its racist comments and insults.

Hogan, returning to the venue where he performed years ago as a professional wrestler, seemed to reprise his character, emerging wearing a giant red, orange and yellow boa and violently waving a large American flag as he posed and danced. He spat on the stage during his speech, flexed his muscles repeatedly and referred to those in the crowd as “Trumpomaniacs” during the event.

Declared Hogan in his characteristic raspy growl: “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here. I don’t see now stinkin’ domestic terrorists in here. The only thing I see here are a bunch of hard-working men and women that are real Americans, brother.”

He also blamed Democratic president candidate Kamala Harris for inflation and said “she acts like she’s the victim. And then all of a sudden, she flips, she flops, she spins and turns it around, and she acts like she’s going to be the damn here, but we all know Trump is the only man that can fix this country today.”

McGraw also took the stage, arguing that folks who call Trump a bully are wrong because there’s no “imbalance of power” between him and his opponents.

“When there’s not, it’s just called a debate, and he’s just better at it than anyone else,” he said. “It’s called debating, it’s called arguing, even name-calling, but it’s not bullying unless there’s an imbalance of power. Whoever he talks to, they’ve got a microphone, they’ve got on their big-boy pants, they’ve got a stage. He’s just better at it.”

McGraw added that when Trump’s opponents call him “Hitler” or a fascist, that may be “ugly” but it also isn’t bullying.

“The last thing he needs is some celebrity endorsement,” McGraw added. “What the hell do I know? I know I’m no celebrity to begin with, and celebrities don’t know anything about policies or politics,” he added, to applause. “So the only difference between me and them is I’m willing to admit it. So why am I here? I’m here to talk to and stand up for the people who have declared their support for Donald J. Trump, or they get found out, or they want to do it but they’re too intimidated. They get canceled, intimidated, marginalized, excluded, or even fired or boycotted.”

White took the stage to note he’s been friends with Trump for decades. He said anyone who votes for Harris is supporting the “status quo” and also addressed inflation and his support for cracking down on illegal immigration.

Musk came onstage wearing all black attire, including a black “Make America Great Again” hat. “I’m not just MAGA; I’m Dark Gothic MAGA,” Musk said, referring to his outfit. Musk, who has spent tens of millions of dollars to boost his campaign, went on to add that he could cut $2 trillion from the current U.S. budget.

Melania Trump, the former first lady, was a surprise guest at Sunday’s rally, introducing her husband, who took the stage the two hours late. His remarks included a nod to the assassination attempts against him.

“If you become president of the United States, you got a hell of a shot at dying,” he said. “I never knew that when I ran. I never thought about it, but here we are, and I’m OK with it. And I would rather be here than anyplace in the world. It’s called a very dangerous profession. But if we win, our enemies won’t be laughing anymore.”

The lineup also included vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Tucker Carlson, former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Staten Island activist Scott LoBaido.

At the event, several speakers crudely insulted Harris, who is vying to become the first woman and Black woman to win the presidency.

Stand-up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people, all key constituencies in the election just nine days away.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Hinchcliffe, whose joke was immediately criticized by Harris’ campaign as it competes with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states.

The closing message that Trump delivered Sunday is that Harris “broke” the country and that Trump “will fix it.” Rallygoers hours beforehand waved signs with the words “Trump will fix it.”

“Hey guys, they’re now scrambling and trying to call us Nazis and fascists,” said Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, who draped a sparkly “MAGA” jacket over the lectern as she spoke. “And you know what they’re claiming, guys? It’s very scary. They’re claiming we’re going to go after them and try and put them in jail. Well, ain’t that rich?”

Trump has denounced the four criminal indictments brought against him as politically motivated. He has ramped up his denunciations in recent weeks of “enemies from within,” naming domestic political rivals, and suggested he would use the military to go after them. Harris, in turn, has called Trump a “fascist.”

The arena, which some news outlets reported was sold out, was full hours before Trump was scheduled to speak. Outside the arena, the sidewalks were overflowing with Trump supporters in red “Make America Great Again” hats. There was a heavy security presence. Streets were blocked off and access to Penn Station was restricted.

Democratic organization Battleground New York released a statement Sunday night about the rally, calling the speeches “a torrent of unhinged crazy, racism and xenophobia.”

“Whether it was targeting Puerto Rico with obscene hate, continuing to claim the 2020 election was stolen, or trying to lay the groundwork to say the same in 2024, this rally was an obscene display of unvarnished bigotry for millions to see,” the group said. “It’s time to turn the page on this era of politics that’s seen abortion bans, kooky conspiracy theories mainstreamed, and an endless stream of nonsense that does nothing to solve problems for working people.”

The rally is one of a series of detours Trump has made from battleground states, including a recent rally in Coachella, California — best known for the famous music festival named after the town — and one in May on the Jersey Shore. This summer he campaigned in the South Bronx.

To reach them, Trump has spent hours appearing on popular podcasts. And his campaign has worked to create viral moments like his visit last weekend to a McDonald’s restaurant, where he made fries and served supporters through the drive-thru window. Video of the stop posted by his campaign has been viewed more than 40 million times on TikTok alone.

Harris has also traveled to non-battleground states for major events intended to drive a national message. She appeared in Houston on Friday with music superstar Beyoncé to speak about reproductive rights, and will deliver her own closing argument Tuesday from the Ellipse in Washington, where Trump spoke ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Trump often compares himself to the country’s greatest entertainers. The former reality TV star has long talked about wanting to hold a rally at the venue in interviews and private conversations.

Beyond the national spotlight and the appeal of appearing on one of the world’s most famous stages, Republicans in the state say the rally will also help down-ballot candidates. New York is home to a handful of competitive congressional races that could determine which party controls the House next year.

Trump also used the stop as a major fundraising opportunity as he continues to seriously lag Harris in the money race.

New York has not voted for a Republican for president in 40 years. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from continuing to insist he believes he can win.

Trump routinely uses his hometown as a foil before audiences in other states, painting a dark vision of the city that bears little resemblance to reality. He’s cast it as crime-ridden and overrun by violent, immigrant gangs who have taken over Fifth and Madison avenues and occupied Times Square.

Trump has a complicated history with the place where he built his business empire and that made him a tabloid and reality TV star. Its residents indicted him last year on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He was found guilty in that case, and also found liable in civil court for business fraud and sexual abuse.