Donald Trump: 30 things the U.S. president-elect believes 

Donald Trump: 30 things the U.S. president-elect believes



Republican Donald Trump has won victory in the presidential race. What are his policies and beliefs?

1. The US should use waterboarding and
other methods of “strong interrogation” in
its fight against the Islamic State group.
Trump said that these methods are
“peanuts” compared to the tactics used by
the militants, such as beheadings. “I like it
a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough,” he
said in June of the practice banned by the
US in 2006.
2. Mexico should pay for the “great, great
wall”. Mr Trump has said he wants to start
building a wall on the shared border from
the first day of his presidency . In some of
his earliest campaign comments, he
suggested that Mexicans coming to the US
were criminals and “rapists”. A wall on the
border, he claims, will not only keep out
undocumented immigrants but Syrian
migrants as well. BBC analysis estimates
the wall could cost between $2.2bn and
$13bn.
3. There should be surveillance on US
mosques. Mr Trump believes Muslims
should be tracked by law enforcement as a
counterterrorism initiative. He has backed
off comments about keeping a database
on all American Muslims, but says he
doesn’t care if watching mosques is seen
as “politically incorrect”.
4. Arab-Americans cheered the attacks on
9/11. Donald Trump repeatedly claimed
that on 11 September 2001, there were
thousands of Arab-Americans celebrating
in New Jersey after two planes flew into
the Twin Towers. He says such public
demonstrations “tell you something” about
Muslims living in the US. However, there
are no media reports to back up the claim.
5. Climate change is just “weather”. While
Mr Trump believes that maintaining “clean
air” and “clean water” is important, he has
dismissed climate change science as a
“hoax” and believes environmental
restrictions on businesses make them less
competitive in the global marketplace. “I
do not believe that we should imperil the
companies within our country,” he told
CNN on the issue. “It costs so much and
nobody knows exactly if it’s going to
work.”
6. Rating women by their looks. A video
from 2005 showed Mr Trump making
obscene comments about women and
triggered numerous claims of alleged
sexual harassment. At one rally, he
suggested that one of the accusers – a
“horrible woman” – was not attractive
enough for him to have groped: “I don’t
think so! I don’t think so!” People who
worked on his reality TV show The
Apprentice accused him of rating female
contestants by their looks. A former Miss
Universe accused him of calling her “Miss
Piggy” after she gained weight.
7. 35 is “check-out time” for women. In
audio recordings released by CNN, Trump
allegedly talks about his daughter’s
physique and dating young women, saying
that women who are 30 years old are at a
“perfect age”, and that when they reach
35, it is time to “check out”.
8. The US needs to “bomb the hell” out of
IS. He has vowed to weaken the militants
by cutting off their access to oil.
9. The world would be better off if Saddam
Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were still
in power. Mr Trump told CNN that he
believes the situation in both Libya and
Iraq is “far worse” than it ever was under
the leaders of the two countries. While he
concedes Saddam was a “horrible guy”, he
says he did a better job combating
terrorists. “He was a bad guy – really bad
guy. But you know what? He did well? He
killed terrorists. He did that so good. They
didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t
talk. They were terrorists. Over.”
10. Illegal migrants should be deported.
Trump once said that he wanted to deport
all of the approximately 11.3 million
undocumented immigrants in the US,
despite criticism that this idea is both
xenophobic, next to impossible and
prohibitively expensive – the BBC
estimates a cost of $114bn. His official
policy now says only those with criminal
records will be deported immediately.
Immigration controls will still be massively
beefed up, including a tripling of agents.
Anyone who enters illegally will be
deported and anyone already in the US
without papers would face the risk of
deportation.
11. Muslims should not be admitted to the
US . In a press release published in the
wake of the terrorist attacks in San
Bernardino, California, Mr Trump wrote
that he was “calling for a total and
complete shutdown of Muslims entering
the United States until our country’s
representatives can figure out what is
going on”. The release created a huge
backlash, including a petition submitted to
British Parliament demanding that Trump
not be allowed into the country.
He’s since gone back on the
announcement, instead saying that that he
would temporarily suspend “immigration
from some of the most dangerous and
volatile regions of the world that have a
history of exporting terrorism”.
12. Syrian refugees could be a “Trojan
horse” to sneak terrorists into the US. He
says that the Paris attacks prove that even
a handful of terrorists posing as migrants
could do catastrophic damage, and so he
will oppose resettling any Syrians in the
US, and deport those who have already
been resettled. It’s unclear if he still
believes that deportations are necessary,
though he has still vowed to suspend the
intake of Syrian refugees.
13. In order to end mass shootings, the
US should invest in mental
health treatment. However, Mr Trump
does not believe that more gun control is
the answer. In a position paper on gun
rights, Mr Trump revealed he had a
concealed-carry permit and that when it
comes to gun and magazine bans, “the
government has no business dictating
what types of firearms good, honest
people are allowed to own”. He would also
oppose an expansion of background
checks.
14. Vladimir Putin is a “leader”. He has
noted the Russian president’s “great
control over his country” and criticised the
state of the relations between it and the
US. In an interview with CNN, Mr Trump
said: “I would probably get along with him
very well. And I don’t think you’d be having
the kind of problems that you’re having
right now”. More recently he has said that
Mr Putin doesn’t “respect” the US,
although that was no reason to get tough
on him.
15. Taxes should be reduced for everyone.
Mr Trump wants to condense the current
seven tax brackets to just three, with no
income tax for “low-income Americans”.
He would lower the business tax to 15%,
from 35%. He would also allow
multinational companies keeping profits
overseas to repatriate their cash at a 10%
tax rate.
16. Hedge fund managers are “getting
away with murder” under the current US
tax code. Mr Trump found common ground
with Democrats like Senator Elizabeth
Warren when he said that hedge fund
managers and the ultra-wealthy did not
pay enough taxes. However, after the
campaign released specifics of his plan,
analysts argued that hedge fund managers
would actually get a tax cut along with the
middle class.
17. China should be taken to task on a
number of issues in order to make trade
with the US more equitable. He says he
will make China stop undervaluing its
currency, and force it to step up its
environmental and labour standards. He is
also critical of the county’s lax attitude
towards American intellectual property and
hacking.
18. Current unemployment statistics are
wrong. Mr Trump has said repeatedly that
unemployment in the US is at 20% – once
commenting it may be as high as 42% –
despite the fact that the Bureau of Labor
Statistics pegs the number at 4.9%.
19. The Black Lives Matter movement is
“trouble”. Mr Trump mocks former
Democratic candidates like Martin
O’Malley for apologising to members of
the protest movement against police
brutality and casts himself as a pro-law
enforcement candidate. “I think they’re
looking for trouble,” he once said of the
activist group. He also tweeted a
controversial graphic purporting to show
that African Americans kill white and black
people at far higher rates than white
people or police officers. However, the
graphic cites a fictitious “Crime Statistics
Bureau” for its numbers, and has been
widely debunked using real FBI data.
20. His net worth is $10bn. Based on Mr
Trump’s 92-page personal financial
disclosure form, Bloomberg calculated last
year that the real estate mogul was worth
about $2.9bn, while Forbes recently put
Trump’s net worth at $3.7bn. Mr Trump
has however insisted that he is worth “in
excess” of $10bn. He says he self-funded
his campaign and describes his start in the
business world as a “small loan of a
million dollars” from his father.
21. Veteran healthcare in the US needs a
major overhaul. Mr Trump wants to clear
out the executive level in the Department
of Veterans Affairs, saying that waiting
times for doctor visits have only increased
after previous interventions failed.
Thousands of veterans have died while
waiting for care, he says. He will invest in
the treatment of “invisible wounds” like
post-traumatic stress disorder and
depression. He would also increase the
number of doctors who specialise in
women’s health to help care for the
increasing number of female veterans.
22. Obamacare is a “disaster”. Mr Trump
says he favours repealing the president’s
Affordable Care Act, which aims at
extending the number of Americans with
health insurance, but he believes that
“everybody’s got to be covered”. A
spokesman for Mr Trump told Forbes that
he would propose “a health plan that will
return authority to the states and operate
under free market principles”.
23. Lobbyists should be more restricted.
Mr Trump proposes that there be a five-
year ban that prevents government
officials and members of congress from
leaving and then immediately becoming
lobbyists. He also calls for a lifetime ban
on senior administration officials from
lobbying on behalf of foreign governments,
and has called on Congress to change
campaign finance laws to ban those
people that lobby for foreign governments
from raising funds for US elections.
24. He is a “really nice guy”. In Trump’s
most recent book, Crippled America, he
writes that “I’m a really nice guy, believe
me, I pride myself on being a nice guy but
I’m also passionate and determined to
make our country great again”. The news
site Gawker points out that he calls
himself a “nice guy” throughout the book,
and Mr Trump repeated that self-
assessment in his opening monologue on
Saturday Night Live and in an interview
with the Washington Post.
25. Tokyo and Seoul should build up
nuclear arsenals . He has said Japan and
South Korea should not rely on the US so
much and would benefit from having their
own weapons. Nuclear war between Japan
and North Korea may be “terrible” but it
would be “pretty quick”.
26. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(Nato) is a “rip-off” because the US pays
more than anyone else. But he later said
he was “all” for the alliance.
27. Doctors should be punished for
administering abortions – or should they?
In an interview with MSNBC, Mr Trump
said that if abortion were to become
illegal, women should be punished for
obtaining them. He then retracted, saying
the doctor would be responsible and he or
she should be punished, instead.
28. The Republican National Committee’s
rules were “stacked against him”. He called
the delegate system “crooked” and
“unfair”. He repeatedly clashed with the
RNC over its nomination process and how
it treated his candidacy during the
primaries. He called rules that allowed
Senator Ted Cruz to gain more delegates
than him in some states “rigged”, as he
did later when talking about the electoral
process when polls were showing Hillary
Clinton ahead of him.
29. The federal minimum wage should be
raised from its present level of $7.25/
hour, though he has flip-flopped on this
issue.
30. Hillary Clinton tried to bribe Attorney-
General Loretta Lynch with the promise of
keeping her job if she became president,
in return for Mrs Clinton escaping
prosecution for the use of a private email
server when secretary of state. He also
said she destroyed the women who
accused her husband Bill of impropriety.
George Stephanopoulos, a former aide to
Bill Clinton, wrote in his memoir that in
1991 when a woman came forward to
accuse Mr Clinton of having an affair, Mrs
Clinton said: “We have to destroy her
story.”

By: BBC