Flint

“The audience was fantastic but she was so nervous. She was like a nervous mess, and so I figured something – I figured something was up, really.” – 15 September, to Fox and Friends



There is no evidence that the Rev Faith Green Timmons planned to interrupt Donald Trump’s speech in Flint, Michigan, in which he veered off the city’s water crisis and into criticism of Hillary Clinton. About 50 people attended the event, and several told the Guardian the same version of events, which contradicted Trump’s.

Attendees said some people heckled or shouted questions and that Timmons actually intervened, asking them to be respectful. Only a few people applauded Trump, according to audience members. Video shows Timmons calm and composed throughout. She wrote on Facebook on Wednesday that Trump had not avoided politics as agreed. “Had he stuck to what his camp claimed he came to do,” she wrote, “we would not have had a problem.”

Deplorables

“She said tens of millions of patriotic Americans are a basket of deplorables. How can you be president, how can you be president for so many people? She said half of our supporters are irredeemable and not American and describes the other half as having run out of options.” – 12 September, Asheville, North Carolina

At a fundraiser in New York last week, Clinton said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables”. This group, she said, included “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” people. She later regretted the generalization of “half”.

Polling suggests that Trump’s supporters are more likely than other voters to express negative sentiments about minorities. It also shows lower but significant such sentiment among supporters of Clinton.

In an Economist/YouGov poll on racial resentment, 59% of Trump’s primary supporters scored in the top quartile, compared with 46% of Republicans who supported other candidates. A Reuters poll that asked voters to rate character traits found 40% of Trump supporters thought black people were more “lazy” than white people and 25% of Clinton supporters agreed. In the same poll, 44% of Trump supporters and 30% of Clinton supporters thought white people more “well-mannered” than black people. Almost half of Trump supporters and nearly a third of Clinton supporters thought black people more “violent” than white people.

In a Gallup poll from last year, 89% of Republicans overall said they would vote for a black person for president, 91% for a woman or a Hispanic person, and 45% for a Muslim or an atheist. In short, Clinton’s generalization pointed to real racial animus, ignored it among her own supporters and showed how difficult it is to attach a number to racism, even while separate polling shows racism is affecting millions in widespread and systemic ways.

Separately, Trump also contradicted his own past remarks. In 2012, after Mitt Romney was lambasted for dismissing 47% of Americans, Trump agreed, telling Fox News: “You do have a large percentage of people that feel they’re entitled.”

In June 2015 Trump similarly dismissed half of all Americans, telling Fox: “We have a society that sits back and says, ‘We don’t have to do anything.’ Eventually the 50% cannot carry, and it’s unfair to them, but cannot carry the other 50%.”

Without figures, the businessman has repeatedly described millions of people in derogatory terms. He has generalized Mexican migrants as “rapists” and “killers”; asked “How stupid are the people of Iowa?”; called journalists “disgusting” and “dishonest”; demeaned veterans who were prisoners of war; branded protesters “thugs”; mocked the disabled; denigrated women; and trafficked in stereotypes offensive to black people, Jewish people and Muslim people. Trump has expressed regret for having said “the wrong thing” but not said what that thing was or whom he had caused “personal pain”.

Details

“I’ve been going around the country offering very detailed plans for reform and change.” – 12 September, Asheville

The plans Trump has presented are notable for how much detail they lack. In his foreign policy plan, for instance, the foundation of his plan to defeat Isis is to not tell the public what his plan to defeat Isis is. He also demanded payment from Nato allies and bemoaned that “our friends are beginning to think they can’t depend on us”; called for heavy investment in the military but a reduction in intervention abroad, where the US has major military bases; and failed to explain how the US can work “creating stability” while also retreating from “the nation-building business”.

Trump’s economic plan is similarly light on details, though it includes vague promises to renegotiate trade deals and a simplified tax plan that would most benefit the wealthiest Americans and probably swell the US deficit. The campaign has, however, presented a plan to coerce Mexico into paying for a wall through tariffs, visa fees and withdrawal of aid. It does not account for Mexican leaders refusing.

Religious speech

“The Johnson amendment has blocked our pastors and ministers and others from speaking their minds from their own pulpits. If they want to talk about Christianity, if they want to preach, if they want to talk about politics, they’re unable to do so. If they want to do it, they take a tremendous risk, that they lose their tax-exempt status.” – 9 September, Washington

In 1954, then senator Lyndon Johnson helped pass a law that amended the tax code and prevented tax-exempt organizations, including churches and other not-for-profit groups, “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office”. Johnson argued that corporations that enjoy a tax subsidy should not take part in direct or indirect political speech.

The law is not often enforced: this year alone, evangelical leaders have spoken up for Trump and Clinton both. Trump is correct that preachers risk losing their tax exemption if they advocate for politicians, but the law has nothing to do with religious speech.

Refugees

“It’s almost impossible to get a Christian in from Syria. They take others but they don’t take Christians. Very rarely, very rarely.” – 9 September, Washington



There is no religious test for entry to the US, nor is it any more difficult for a Christian refugee from Syria to enter the US than for a Muslim or any other person. (The application and screening process is daunting for any refugee, however.)

Trump has proposed a complete ban on refugees from Syria, meaning he would make it impossible for any Christian from Syria to come to the US.