* Calling for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on."
* "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."
* I actually disagree with you on this one. Here's the quote: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know." When I heard the audio of that, it sounded very much like he was talking about people taking matters into their own hands. It came across as a joke, but one in very poor taste. Still, I suppose it's conceivable that he's talking about something else, so give that one a pass.
* Then of course, "And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." Sure, that's not a public statement, nor a statement of policy. It's also not something I can imagine myself or one of my friends saying though. It speaks to his character.
That's just a few. He's not as bad as the media or (obviously) the Clinton camp portrayed. But he still seems plenty bad. That said, maybe he can still govern effectively, and maybe some of the change he brings about will be positive. I hope so.
We agree that he has said some controversial things, including more than a few that I don't agree with.
We agree that his acceptance speech offers a glimmer of hope and that he might be able to bring about some positive change.
Let's hope that's the case.
That was one example of stretching things to make them fit, others included:
* Trump wants to build a database of Muslims (if you look at the transcripts it was actually the reporters suggesting this, not Trump, Trump moved on to talking about something else (the wall) and the reporter kept asking questions and took his replies as if he was talking about the database).
* Trump mocked a disabled reporter (the reporter's disability was completely different from the impersonation Trump did but coincidentally a freeze frame from the video had a pose similar to a picture of the reporter. So either he knew of the reporter's disability but was doing a completely different impersonation, or he didn't know of reporter's disability and was doing a completely different impersonation - either way he wasn't mocking the reporter's disability).
* Trump thinks all Mexicans are rapists and criminals - this is a good breakdown of that: http://www.salon.com/2015/12/21/the_media_needs_to_stop_tell...
* Trump called for the assassination of Hillary Clinton and Supreme Court justices (transcripts clearly show the context was talking about exercising voting rights).
The list goes on, and on, and the more you look in to it, the more you see example after example where the media took something Trump said or did and applied a narrative to it that matched a narrative various email leaks have shown was the strategy to defeat Trump.
And now half the U.S. is scared because it seems one of the Clinton campaign's main strategies was to make people scared of a president Trump.
The strategy worked well in that many people now seem to be afraid of what's to come, but acceptance-speech Trump did not come off as scary. I think it's worth giving him a chance.