The important distinction here is that stop and frisk as a tactic is constitutional. The way it was applied in New York City, and as it was challenged in the lawsuit that Trump was referring to, was found unconstitutional. Blacks and Hispanics who were stopped by New York police sued the city, arguing that they were targeted for stops in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, which argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, confirmed that the practice was found unconstitutional in the 2013 case. But NYPD rejected the claim that stop and frisk is unconstitutional, saying Scheindlin ordered remedies to ensure the agency "applies the lawful policing tool constitutionally."
The MIT Atlas indicates that Trump is incorrect: "The top export destinations of North Korea are China ($2.67B), India ($71M), Pakistan ($40M), Nigeria ($20M) and Brazil ($19M). The top import origins are China ($3.49B), Thailand ($107M), Russia ($82M), India ($75M) and Singapore ($48M)." Iran is not in the top five trading partners of North Korea, whether counting exports or imports.
Maybe Trump meant that North Korea is on the top list of Iran's trading partners? The MIT Atlas indicates that Trump is also incorrect if that's what he meant "The top export destinations of Iran are China ($25B), India ($10B), Japan ($6B), South Korea ($4B) and Turkey ($1B). The top import origins are China ($24B), India ($4B), South Korea ($4B), Turkey ($4B) & Germany ($3B)."
We note that South Korea is on Iran's list of top trading partners--not North Korea!
The US share is calculated on the basis of GDP--and adjusted regularly. Currently that's 22%, compared to about 15% for Germany, 11% for France, 10% for the UK, 8% for Italy, 7% for Canada, and so forth--based on NATO's guideline, established in 2006, that defense expenditures should amount to 2% of each country's GDP. The median spending in 2015 is just 1.18% of GDP, compared to 3.7% for the US, Just four other countries currently exceed the 2% guideline.
However, on INDIRECT funding, NATO says, "The volume of the US defense expenditure effectively represents 73% of the defense spending of the Alliance."
In short, direct funding of NATO is allocated on a reasonable formula, with the US paying just 22% of the cost. But indirect funding is a different issue, with U.S. defense spending far exceeding the spending of other NATO members.
Trump indeed recently said, "With Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water." Wonkette.com reports that on Sept. 4, seven Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats approached the USS Firebolt in the Persian Gulf; one Iranian boat came within 100 yards of the USS Firebolt. Wonkette.com concludes that Trump's tough talk was cheered by the crowd at the Values Voter Summit, which chanted "USA! USA!" and "Shoot them!"
THE FACTS: This is a recurrent claim by Trump with no evidence to back it up. It's the Federal Reserve's job to help improve the economy and to the extent that happens, political leaders may benefit. But presidents can't make the Fed, an independent agency, do anything.
Under former chair Ben Bernanke and current chair Janet Yellen, the Fed has attracted controversy by pegging the short-term interest rate it controls to nearly zero for seven years. It is still ultra-low at between 0.25% and 0.5%, a rate that some economists worry could spark a stock-market bubble or inflation. Bernanke was initially appointed by Republican Pres. George W. Bush, and reappointed by Obama.
One reason Yellen is keeping rates low is that, in some ways, she agrees with Trump that hiring needs to keep growing to provide jobs.
Trump paid federal income taxes in three out of five years from 1975 to 1979, according to a report to the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, which viewed Trump's tax returns when the Trump Plaza Corporation applied for a casino license in the state in 1981.
Although the returns were not disclosed, the report indicated that Trump paid $18,714 in taxes on $76,210 in income in 1975, $10,832 in taxes on $24,594 in income in 1976 and $42,386 in taxes on $118,530 in income in 1977. Trump reported income losses of $406,379 in 1978 and $3,443,560 in 1979, and thus paid no federal income tax for those years.
Bloomberg Fact check: NAFTA had a modest effect on manufacturing jobs. An Economic Policy Institute analysis says manufacturing jobs dropped in the 1990s from 17.9 million to 17.6 million.
Trump said of Hillary, "She's been doing this for 30 years. And why hasn't she made the agreements better? The NAFTA agreement is defective," [implying that Hillary and Bill Clinton held primary responsibility for NAFTA]. Chicago Tribune fact-checkers noted that while NAFTA was signed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, it was largely negotiated under the administration of George H.W. Bush.
Ford is moving production of the Ford Focus and Ford C-Max from its Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne to Mexico in 2018. Ford said in April it plans to invest $1.6 billion to build a new plant in Mexico and create 2,800 jobs to build small cars there. However, Ford also plans to replace the products it makes in Wayne with two new vehicles and has repeatedly said no jobs will be lost. Ford's CEO said that "zero" jobs will be lost in the US and said "it is really unfortunate when politics get in the way of the facts."
Trumps' comments also prompted tweets from both Ford and the UAW countering Trump's claims. The automaker also made a commitment in November to invest $9 billion in U.S. plants and creates or retains more than 8,500 jobs as part of a new four-year contract with the UAW.
When a company in Germany makes goods to sell at home, it has to pay the VAT. But if it makes them to sell in the US, it doesn't--the tax gets waived at the border. If a US company sells in Germany, it does have to pay the VAT. [The UC Irvine] interpretation is that] border adjustability turns the VAT into an "implicit export subsidy" for foreign companies and an "implicit tariff" on US exporters. This is just dead wrong. Everybody has to pay Germany's VAT when they're selling goods in Germany. Nobody has to pay Germany's VAT when they're selling goods outside of Germany.
You can't really blame Trump for this one: a guy with a PhD in economics fed this stuff to him.
TRUMP: That makes me smart.
CLINTON: So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he's not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something that he's trying to hide.
TRUMP: As far as the lawsuit, yes, when I was very young, I went into my father's real estate company in Brooklyn and Queens, and we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country--it was a federal lawsuit--were sued. We settled the suit with no admission of guilt. I'll go one step further. In Palm Beach, Florida, a wealthy community, I opened a club, and really got great credit for it: no discrimination against African- Americans, against Muslims, against anybody.
TRUMP: Stop and frisk worked very well in New York. It brought the crime rate way down. You take the gun away from criminals that shouldn't be having it. We have gangs roaming the street. And in many cases, they're illegal immigrants. And they have guns. And they shoot people. And we have to be very vigilant. Right now, our police, in many cases, are afraid to do anything. We have to protect our inner cities, because African-American communities are being decimated by crime.
Q: Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York, because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men.
TRUMP: No, you're wrong. Our new mayor refused to go forward with the case. They would have won on appeal. There are many places where it's allowed.
Q: The argument is that it's a form of racial profiling.
TRUMP: No, the argument is that we have to take the guns away from bad people that shouldn't have them. You have to have stop-and-frisk.
A: We need law and order. If we don't have it, we're not going to have a country. I just got today the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. We have endorsements from almost every police group, a large percentage of them in the US. We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in he'll because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.
TRUMP: I did not--
CLINTON: I think it's real. I think science is real.
TRUMP: I do not say that.
CLINTON: And I think it's important that we deal with it, both at home & abroad. Here's what we can do. We can deploy a half a billion more solar panels. We can have enough clean energy to power every home. We can build a new modern electric grid. That's a lot of jobs; that's a lot of new economic activity.
TRUMP: She talks about solar panels. We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one. Now, look, I'm a great believer in all forms of energy, but we're putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are a disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt. You can't do what you're looking to do with $20 trillion in debt.
TRUMP: As far as child care is concerned and so many other things, I think Hillary and I agree on that. We probably disagree a little bit as to numbers and amounts and what we're going to do, but perhaps we'll be talking about that later. But we have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us. We have to stop our companies from leaving the United States and, with it, firing all of their people. All you have to do is take a look at Carrier air conditioning in Indianapolis. They left -- fired 1,400 people. They're going to Mexico. So many hundreds and hundreds of companies are doing this.
And by the way, another one powerful is the worst deal I think I've ever seen negotiated that you started is the Iran deal. Iran is one of their biggest trading partners. Iran has power over North Korea.
And when they made that horrible deal with Iran, they should have included the fact that they do something with respect to North Korea. And they should have done something with respect to Yemen and all these other places.
Hillary will tell you to go to her website and read all about how to defeat ISIS, which she could have defeated by never having it get going in the first place. It's getting tougher to defeat them, because they're in more and more places, more and more states, more and more nations.
I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world. We cannot protect countries all over the world where they're not paying us what we need.
We have to renegotiate our trade deals. They're taking our jobs, they're giving incentives, they're doing things that, frankly, we don't do. Let me give you the example of Mexico. They have a VAT tax. We're on a different system. When we sell into Mexico, there's a tax. When they sell in--automatic, 16 percent, approximately. When they sell into us, there's no tax. It's a defective agreement. It's been defective for a long time, many years, but the politicians haven't done anything about it. But in all fairness to Secretary Clinton, when she started talking about this, it was really very recently. She's been doing this for 30 years. And why hasn't she made the agreements better? The NAFTA agreement is defective. We owe $20 trillion. We cannot do it any longer.
Clinton: Well, that is just not accurate. I was against it once it was finally negotiated and the terms were laid out.
TRUMP: First of all, I agree, and a lot of people even within my own party want to give certain rights to people on watch lists and no-fly lists. I agree with you. When a person is on a watch list or a no-fly list, and I have the endorsement of the NRA, which I'm very proud of--but I think we have to look very strongly at no-fly lists and watch lists. And when people are on there, if they shouldn't be on there, we'll help them legally, we'll help them get off. But I tend to agree with that quite strongly.
CLINTON: I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them. It is essential that America's word be good. On behalf of a majority of the American people, I want to say that our word is good.
TRUMP: And as far as Japan is concerned, I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world.
TRUMP: I'm under a routine audit. As soon as the audit's finished, it will be released. But you will learn more about Donald Trump by going down to the federal elections, where I filed a 104-page essentially financial statement. It shows income at $694 million for this past year.
Q: The IRS says you're perfectly free to release your taxes during an audit.
TRUMP: Look, I've been under audit almost for 15 years. I'm not even complaining. I don't mind it. It's almost become a way of life. I get audited by the IRS. But other people don't. I will say this: I will release my tax returns--against my lawyer's wishes--when she releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted. As soon as she releases them, I will release.
Q: So it's negotiable?TRUMP: It's not negotiable, no.
TRUMP: [Hillary's 2008 campaign] sent a highly respected reporter at McClatchy, [a news agency], to Kenya to find out about it. She failed to get the birth certificate. When I got involved, I didn't fail. I got him to give the birth certificate. So I'm satisfied with it.
Q: The birth certificate was produced in 2011. You've continued to question the president's legitimacy as recently as January 2016. So what changed your mind?
TRUMP: Well, nobody was pressing it. I figured you'd ask the question tonight, of course. But I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate. And I think I did a good job.
CLINTON: Donald knew he was going to be asked this question, so he tried to put the whole racist birther lie to bed.
TRUMP: She doesn't have the look. She doesn't have the stamina. I said she doesn't have the stamina. And I don't believe she does have the stamina. To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina. You have to be able to negotiate our trade deals. You have so many different things you have to be able to do, and I don't believe that Hillary has the stamina.
CLINTON: Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.
CLINTON: You know, I made a mistake using a private e- mail.
TRUMP: That's for sure.
CLINTON: And if I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently. But I'm not going to make any excuses. It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that.
TRUMP: That was more than a mistake. That was done purposely. OK? When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they're not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it's disgraceful. And believe me, this country thinks it's disgraceful, also. As far as my tax returns, you don't learn that much from tax returns. That I can tell you. You learn a lot from financial disclosure.
TRUMP: Sidney Blumenthal works for [Hillary's] campaign and sent a highly respected reporter to Kenya to find out about it. They were pressing it very hard. She failed to get the birth certificate. When I got involved, I didn't fail. I got him to give the birth certificate. So I'm satisfied with it.
Q: The birth certificate was produced in 2011. You've continued to question the president's legitimacy as recently as Jan. 2016. What changed your mind?
TRUMP: Nobody was pressing it. But I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate. And I think I did a good job.
CLINTON: Donald started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted.
A: I'm really calling for major jobs, because the wealthy are going create tremendous jobs. They're going to expand their companies. I'm getting rid of the carried interest provision. And if you really look, it's not a tax. It's really not a great thing for the wealthy. It's a great thing for the middle class. It's a great thing for companies to expand. And when these people are going to put billions and billions of dollars into companies, and when they're going to bring $2.5 trillion back from overseas, where they can't bring the money back, because politicians like Secretary Clinton won't allow them to bring the money back, because the taxes are so onerous, and the bureaucratic red tape is so bad. It's probably $5 trillion that we can't bring into our country. With a little leadership, you'd get it in here very quickly, and it could be put to use on the inner cities and lots of other things, and it would be beautiful.
A: We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not. I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She's saying "Russia, Russia, Russia," but I don't. Maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK? We came up with the Internet, and Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they're beating us at our own game. So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is a huge problem. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better and certainly cyber is one of them.
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The above quotations are from First Presidential Debate at Hofstra University, Sept. 26, 2016, moderated by Lester Holt of NBC News.
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