Donald Trump & 2016 Election

[pilferk]

Robin Roberts said it best:  Bye, Felicia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5asgDQQcELs

Yes.

I think many people felt that way 8 months ago (the date on the video) when she was fired from the White House.  Because she was unqualified to hold any position within the administration, and her appointment was an incident of cronyism (and one in a VERY long line of them).  She was a known media whore who was unreliable and more than a little nutty.  And Trump hired her.

I think it's the height of hypocrisy, and a little ironic, that Repubs...in their defense of the president...are now saying similar things NOW.  Because she is no different than she was when she was appointed/hired.  She is who she has always been.  So...if you point these things out now...why not when she was hired? Where was the outrage when she was WORKING in the white house, and the questions about whether she was fit (or whether she would leak sensitive material) back then?  And why did her appointment not raise questions about this presidents judgment in appointing her (then and now)?

As for her media rounds now, I don't disagree with you.  I don't find credible/interesting anything she says, really. It's all meant to sell her book and get her on TV. HOWEVER, the tapes (and reported video) she's been slowly leaking? That I find a little more interesting.  The first batch (her firing) was meh.  The second batch, showing she was basically offered a bribe by the Trump campaign, I find more interesting.

You don't really have to trust (or like) the source when they are providing you with a/v evidence to support them. You just have to trust your own eyes and ears.

[pilferk]

Robin Roberts said it best:  Bye, Felicia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5asgDQQcELs

And? We know she's a horrible person but she has evidence to back up her claims. Plus Trump had hired her 3 times. So what's that say about him? What happened to hiring only the best people?

See, he never really finishes the sentence:

"Only the best people who are 100% loyal to the cause(and by cause, I mean Donald Trump and nothing else) and are willing to 100% accept my bullshit without challenge."

Which, of course, really sort of contradicts "best people" but....

[GypsySoul]

Robin Roberts said it best:  Bye, Felicia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5asgDQQcELs

Yes.

I think many people felt that way 8 months ago (the date on the video) when she was fired from the White House.  Because she was unqualified to hold any position within the administration, and her appointment was an incident of cronyism (and one in a VERY long line of them).  She was a known media whore who was unreliable and more than a little nutty.  And Trump hired her.

I think it's the height of hypocrisy, and a little ironic, that Repubs...in their defense of the president...are now saying similar things NOW.  Because she is no different than she was when she was appointed/hired.  She is who she has always been.  So...if you point these things out now...why not when she was hired? Where was the outrage when she was WORKING in the white house, and the questions about whether she was fit (or whether she would leak sensitive material) back then?  And why did her appointment not raise questions about this presidents judgment in appointing her (then and now)?

As for her media rounds now, I don't disagree with you.  I don't find credible/interesting anything she says, really. It's all meant to sell her book and get her on TV. HOWEVER, the tapes (and reported video) she's been slowly leaking? That I find a little more interesting.  The first batch (her firing) was meh.  The second batch, showing she was basically offered a bribe by the Trump campaign, I find more interesting.

You don't really have to trust (or like) the source when they are providing you with a/v evidence to support them. You just have to trust your own eyes and ears.

Even April Ryan (hardly a Republican) is saying the same thing "NOW"
Her ONLY objection was the President using the word "dog"

http://www.tmz.com/2018/08/20/april-ryan-omarosa-feud-book-donald-trump-ghostwriter/
(link has video of Ms Ryan's full statement in her own words)

April Ryan is throwing some serious shade at Omarosa ... saying she never put pen to paper because she used a ghostwriter. 

Ryan -- who has reported at the White House for more than 20 years -- bashes Omarosa for her secret recordings and being a backstabber.

April says her upcoming book, "Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House," unlike Omarosa's book, is the real deal.

As for bowing down to Trump before she broke ranks ... April says O shouldn't wait for invites to the church social anytime soon.
But, she does draw the line ... even Omarosa doesn't deserve what Donald Trump dished out.

As for her media rounds now, I don't disagree with you.  I don't find credible/interesting anything she says, really. It's all meant to sell her book and get her on TV. HOWEVER, the tapes (and reported video) she's been slowly leaking? That I find a little more interesting.  The first batch (her firing) was meh.  The second batch, showing she was basically offered a bribe by the Trump campaign, I find more interesting.

IMHO, there is nothing (so far) interesting or surprising about the tapes released.  As you stated: "meh".  We already knew exactly what was said between Omarosa and General Kelly almost immediately after she was fired so the tape only corroborated what we already knew and discredited her own original "I wasn't fired, I quit" story.

As far as the tape with the daughter-in-law, unfortunately it has been and still is a sad practice in our society to "promote up & out" rather than dealing with/addressing an individual's failure and inadequacy because it's more economically advantageous to the powers that be.  It happens in our schools.  It happens in corporate America (and no doubt throughout the world).  It happens in politics.


No one, including us, should be giving this women the time of day!

Bye, Felicia

[tim_m]

Now Trump is threatening the security clearance of an active FBI member for criticizing him. This has to stop. The Repblicans have to grow a pair and stop this mad man.

[pilferk]

Even April Ryan (hardly a Republican) is saying the same thing "NOW"
Her ONLY objection was the President using the word "dog"

http://www.tmz.com/2018/08/20/april-ryan-omarosa-feud-book-donald-trump-ghostwriter/
(link has video of Ms Ryan's full statement in her own words)

April Ryan is throwing some serious shade at Omarosa ... saying she never put pen to paper because she used a ghostwriter. 

Ryan -- who has reported at the White House for more than 20 years -- bashes Omarosa for her secret recordings and being a backstabber.

April says her upcoming book, "Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House," unlike Omarosa's book, is the real deal.

As for bowing down to Trump before she broke ranks ... April says O shouldn't wait for invites to the church social anytime soon.
But, she does draw the line ... even Omarosa doesn't deserve what Donald Trump dished out.

You're missing the point.

Libs, indies, and most of the press pointed all this out when O was hired by this administration.  She is who she has always been....she isn't doing anything different than she has done in the past, some of it while in the employ of Trump's own organizations (some of it to April Ryan).  She just did it to serve the Trump Campaigns needs.  All of it icky, backstabbing, media whore, underhanded shit.

April Ryan had a longstanding friendship with O....and O stabbed her in the back, apparently, during the campaign. Yet another example of the above.  And a pretty good reason that Ryan is so vocal and passionate about her criticism.

The point is: This was all true when O was hired/appointed to her position in this administration.  And the Libs, indies, and most of the press pointed that out. And did it again when she "quit" (aka was fired) in December  The Repubs were silent (actually, the conservative press like Fox News defended the appointment/hiring at the time).

NOW, when the shoe is on the other foot, and O's nature is turned against the Republican agenda, it's pearl clutching and outrage. 

It's hypocrisy.  She is who she's always been.  If you defended her then, or thought her appointment was a good idea, or simply sat back and watched it all happen without protest....you're way too late to the party, now, for it to appear as anything other then politically motivated criticism born of self interest.  Conservatives don't care about her character or reliability or any of that...they care that all that ickiness has been turned on THEM.

It's not that the criticisms of Robin Roberts and April Ryan are wrong. It's not.

It's the fact the Repubs touting that criticism rings hollow.  Because a year ago, they were singing her praises while the Libs, Indies, and Press were saying the same things then that they're saying now.

The only thing that has changed the Repubs minds is that they are now the target of those shady actions.

"When you swim with the sharks, expect to get bit"

In addition to all that, Repubs voted for a guy to "drain the swamp".

This was the swampiest of swampy appointments.  You can't be outraged by her conduct now (which is the same as the conduct she's shows for years) and not confront that point.  The president hired/appointed this shady character purely out of nepotism/cronyism, with no qualifications for the job she was getting.

And finally, if the ghost writer thing gets you all worked up.....you should be REALLY pissed at Trump. Just about every book he's ever written has had a ghost writer.  Sometimes plainly stated, sometimes not.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-books-tweet-ghostwriter-tim-o-brien-tony-schwartz-writer-response-a8431271.html

IMHO, there is nothing (so far) interesting or surprising about the tapes released.  As you stated: "meh".  We already knew exactly what was said between Omarosa and General Kelly almost immediately after she was fired so the tape only corroborated what we already knew and discredited her own original "I wasn't fired, I quit" story.

As far as the tape with the daughter-in-law, unfortunately it has been and still is a sad practice in our society to "promote up & out" rather than dealing with/addressing an individual's failure and inadequacy because it's more economically advantageous to the powers that be.  It happens in our schools.  It happens in corporate America (and no doubt throughout the world).  It happens in politics.


No one, including us, should be giving this women the time of day!

Bye, Felicia

This was neither promoting up/out, nor common practice (esp in a political campaign).

This was outright bribery.  Maybe not ILLEGAL bribery, but bribery all the same.  It was an offer of money in exchange to withhold damaging information on Trump.  Simple as that.  And it happened well after O had left the White House, when the campaign found out about the book and the recordings.

And the worst part? It was going to be funded by campaign donations.  If I had given money to a political candidate, and found out that's what it was being used for, I'd be PISSED. Again, the swampiest of the swampy actions. Those are actions more closely associated with the mafia than they are political campaigns.

[GypsySoul]

The Democrats did it first but the Republicans did it faster!!! 
Funny (ironic) thing is both Trump & Gore gave her four opportunities before cutting ties permanently.

According to this article, it took the Clinton administration 2 years to can her sorry ass!  The Trump administration did it in under 1!!!

It also states that she was transferred three separate times (promoted up/out within the Clinton administration?) for not doing her job.


Politics - Dec. 15, 2017
This Isn’t the First Time Omarosa’s Been Fired From the White House
By Madeleine Aggeler
https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/omarosas-been-fired-from-the-white-house-before.html

This week, Omarosa Manigault Newman left her position (according to different sources, either willingly or forcibly) as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. And while there has been a uniquely Trumpian vibe to the whole affair — conflicting information, feuds, reports of dramatic, expletive-filled confrontations — this is not, in fact, the first time Omarosa has left a White House job under less-than-glorious circumstances. In her 20s, she was a political appointee in the Clinton administration where, according to People, she held four jobs in two years.

During a 2004 Q&A in Washington, D.C., shortly after she gained national attention as a contestant on the first season of The Apprentice, Omarosa spoke somewhat bitterly of her time in government:

    "I have done logistics and advance and event planning for the White House under the Gore staff … At 23, I got appointed to the White House. That was not a place to learn how to be a young professional. That’s a very difficult environment, because they don’t believe in training. They just kind of throw you in the fire."

According to a former Gore staffer, though, Omarosa never did logistics or advance work for the vice-president; she worked as a scheduling correspondent, responding to various invitations Gore received.

The staffer also said “she didn’t do her job, and it got everybody in trouble,” and was soon sent to work in the White House personnel office, which then transferred her again to the Commerce Department, where she held two different positions. In the last, she was reportedly “asked to leave as quickly as possible, she was so disruptive.”

“One woman wanted to slug her,” Cheryl Shavers, the former undersecretary for Technology at the Commerce Department told People.

So, Omarosa’s history in government has been checkered, to say the least. But at least she was able to get a White House wedding photo shoot out of this last job.

[pilferk]

The Democrats did it first but the Republicans did it faster!!! 
Funny (ironic) thing is both Trump & Gore gave her four opportunities before cutting ties permanently.

According to this article, it took the Clinton administration 2 years to can her sorry ass!  The Trump administration did it in under 1!!!

It also states that she was transferred three separate times (promoted up/out within the Clinton administration?) for not doing her job.


Politics - Dec. 15, 2017
This Isn’t the First Time Omarosa’s Been Fired From the White House
By Madeleine Aggeler
https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/omarosas-been-fired-from-the-white-house-before.html

This week, Omarosa Manigault Newman left her position (according to different sources, either willingly or forcibly) as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. And while there has been a uniquely Trumpian vibe to the whole affair — conflicting information, feuds, reports of dramatic, expletive-filled confrontations — this is not, in fact, the first time Omarosa has left a White House job under less-than-glorious circumstances. In her 20s, she was a political appointee in the Clinton administration where, according to People, she held four jobs in two years.

During a 2004 Q&A in Washington, D.C., shortly after she gained national attention as a contestant on the first season of The Apprentice, Omarosa spoke somewhat bitterly of her time in government:

    "I have done logistics and advance and event planning for the White House under the Gore staff … At 23, I got appointed to the White House. That was not a place to learn how to be a young professional. That’s a very difficult environment, because they don’t believe in training. They just kind of throw you in the fire."

According to a former Gore staffer, though, Omarosa never did logistics or advance work for the vice-president; she worked as a scheduling correspondent, responding to various invitations Gore received.

The staffer also said “she didn’t do her job, and it got everybody in trouble,” and was soon sent to work in the White House personnel office, which then transferred her again to the Commerce Department, where she held two different positions. In the last, she was reportedly “asked to leave as quickly as possible, she was so disruptive.”

“One woman wanted to slug her,” Cheryl Shavers, the former undersecretary for Technology at the Commerce Department told People.

So, Omarosa’s history in government has been checkered, to say the least. But at least she was able to get a White House wedding photo shoot out of this last job.

1) And...she was fired.

The difference being, that was LONG before the entire world even knew who she was (aka: it's hard to complain about a low level political appointee you don't know, have never heard of, and who hold a job so unimportant as to not catch the political eye).  It also doesn't look like she was promoted...she was DEMOTED. Each time taking a less prominent position in a less prominent department.

Isn't the above even MORE of a disqualifier for hiring her into a government position AGAIN?

You're not making your case, here.  You're making mine.

2) And you're still missing the point, here. Intentionally or not, I can't tell.

[GypsySoul]

MY point is that she has no impact on my, your, or everyone in the entire world's life. 
She is the ultimate example of what "Bye, Felicia" expresses. 

[tim_m]

Well Cohen has surrendered. He has testified under oath that Trump instructed him to commit crimes with the intent of affecting the outcome of the election.

[tim_m]

Cohen's lawyer said on CNN that he has information pertinent to the Russia conspiracy that Mueller will find useful. How long before Trump does something take crazy.?

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Cohen's plea deal is prosecutor's attempt to set up Trump

By Mark Penn, opinion contributor — 08/22/18 07:25 AM EDT
147
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Here we go, from Russia with love to campaign finance with love.

Why was Michael Cohen investigated? Because the “Steele dossier” had him making secret trips to meet with Russians that never happened, so his business dealings got a thorough scrubbing and, in the process, he fell into the special counsel’s Manafort bin — the bin reserved for squeezing until the juice comes out. And now we are back to 1998 all over again, with presidents and presidential candidates covering up their alleged marital misdeeds and prosecutors trying to turn legal acts into illegal ones by inventing new crimes.

The plot to get President Trump out of office thickens, as Cohen obviously was his own mini-crime syndicate and decided that his betrayals of Trump meant he would be better served turning on his old boss to cut the best deal with prosecutors he could rather than holding out and getting the full Manafort treatment. That was clear the minute he hired attorney Lanny Davis, who doesn’t try cases and did past work for Hillary Clinton. Cohen had recorded his client, trying to entrap him, sold information about Trump (while acting as his lawyer) to corporations for millions of dollars, and didn’t pay taxes on millions.

The sweetener for the prosecutors, of course, was getting Cohen to plead guilty to campaign violations that were not campaign violations. Money paid to people who come out of the woodwork and shake down people under threat of revealing bad sexual stories are not legitimate campaign expenditures. They are personal expenditures. That is true for both candidates we like and candidates we don’t. Just imagine if candidates used campaign funds instead of their own money to pay folks like Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about affairs; they would get indicted for misuse of campaign funds for personal purposes and for tax evasion.

There appear to be two payments involved in this unusual plea — Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign violation for having “coordinated” the American Media Inc. payment to Karen McDougal for her story, not for actually making the payment. So he is pleading guilty over a corporate contribution he did not make.

Think about this for a minute: Suppose ABC had paid Stormy Daniel for her story in coordination with Michael Avenatti or maybe even the Democratic National Committee’s law firm on the eve of the election; by this reasoning, if the purpose of this money paid, just before the election, would be to hurt Trump and help Clinton win, this payment would be a corporate political contribution. If using it not to get Trump would be a corporate contribution, then using it to get Trump also has to be a corporate contribution. That’s why neither are corporate contributions and this is a bogus approach to federal election law. (Note that none of the donors in the 2012 John Edwards case faced any legal issues and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruled their payments were not campaign contributions that had to be reported — facts that prosecutors tried to suppress at trial.)

Now, when it comes to Stormy Daniels, Cohen made a payment a few days before the election that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani says was reimbursed. First, given that this payment was on Oct. 27, it would never have been reported before the election campaign and so, for all intents and purposes, was immaterial as it relates to any effect on the campaign. What’s clear in this plea deal is that, in exchange for overall leniency on his massive tax evasion, Cohen is pleading guilty to these other charges as an attempt to give prosecutors what they want — a Trump connection.

The usual procedures here would be for the FEC to investigate complaints and sort through these murky laws to determine if these kinds of payments are personal in nature or more properly classified as campaign expenditures. And, on the Daniels’ payment that was made and reimbursed by Trump, it is again a question of whether that was made for personal reasons (especially since they have been trying since 2011 to obtain agreement). Just because it would be helpful to the campaign does not convert it to a campaign expenditure. Think of a candidate with bad teeth who had dental work done to look better for the campaign; his campaign still could not pay for it because it’s a personal expenditure.

Contrast what is going on here with the treatment of the millions of dollars paid to a Democratic law firm which, in turn, paid out money to political research firm Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele without listing them on any campaign expenditure form — despite crystal-clear laws and regulations that the ultimate beneficiaries of the funds must be listed. This rule was even tightened recently. There is no question that hiring spies to do oppo research in Russia is a campaign expenditure, and yet, no prosecutorial raids have been sprung on the law firm, Fusion GPS or Steele. Reason: It does not “get” Trump.

So, Trump spends $130,000 to keep the lid on a personal story and the full weight of state prosecutors comes down on his lawyer, tossing attorney-client privilege to the wind. Democrats spend potentially millions on secret oppo research and no serious criminal investigation occurs.

Remember that the feds tried a similar strategy against Democrat John Edwards in the 2012 case and it failed. As Gregory Craig, a lawyer who worked both for President Clinton and John Edwards, said: “The government’s theory is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. It is novel and untested. There is no civil or criminal precedent for such a prosecution.” Hey, tried it there anyway and it failed.

And let’s not forget that President Clinton was entrapped into lying about his affairs and, although impeached, was acquitted by the Senate. The lesson was clear: We are not going to remove presidents for lying about who they had affairs with, nor even convict politicians on campaign-finance violations for these personal payments.

With Cohen pleading guilty, there will be no test of soundness of the prosecution theories here, and it is yet another example of the double standards of justice of one investigation that gave Clinton aides and principals every benefit of the doubt and another investigation that targeted Trump people until they found unrelated crimes to use as leverage. Prosecutors thought nothing of using the Logan Act against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and, now, obscure and unsettled elements of campaign finance law against Trump lawyer Cohen to manufacture crimes in what is a naked attempt to take Trump down and defeat democracy.

Donald Trump should do a better job of picking aides who pay their taxes — but he’s not responsible for their financial problems and crimes. These investigations, essentially based on an opposition-funded dossier, were never anything other than an attempt to push into a corner as many Trump aides and family members as possible and shake them down until they could get close enough to Trump to try to take him down. That’s why so many of his aides, lawyers, and actions in the campaign and in the White House have undergone hour-by-hour scrutiny to find anything that could be colored into a crime, leaving far behind the original Russia-collusion theory as the fake pretext it was. Paying for nondisclosure agreements for perfectly legal activities is not a crime, not a campaign contribution as commonly understood or ruled upon by the FEC — and squeezing guilty pleas out of vulnerable witnesses does not change those facts.

Mark Penn is a managing partner of the Stagwell Group, a private equity firm specializing in marketing services companies, as well as chairman of the Harris Poll and author of “Microtrends Squared.” He served as pollster and adviser to President Clinton from 1995 to 2000, including during Clinton’s impeachment. You can follow him on Twitter @Mark_Penn.

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/402959-cohens-plea-deal-is-prosecutors-attempt-to-set-up-trump

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Quick weigh in on the Omorosa circus. She shouldn't  have been hired by Trump in the first place. Bad move.

Anyone find it odd that she is now calling Trump a bigot but previously had no problem supporting him for years? Secretly recording in the White House speaks to her character and it could bring her up on charges. Its all about hurt feelings over being fired and selling her book. 

[pilferk]

MY point is that she has no impact on my, your, or everyone in the entire world's life. 
She is the ultimate example of what "Bye, Felicia" expresses. 

Except, she did.  She was a White House advisor.  She was helping to influence, shape opinions of, and get information to, the president. 

Now, the president and press sec will tell you TODAY that's not true. That she was given a job out of pity and stuffed in an office and paid to do nothing (which, honestly, I'm not sure how you're OK with, either). Just like they try to minimize the contributions of EVERYONE who turns out to be a "bad egg" (re: not 100% loyal to the Trump dictator...sorry.... "agenda") in their administration once they leave.

But it's a very obvious lie.  Reports while she was actually IN the White House is that, prior to General Kelly's appointment, she was in and out of the Oval office, and in the president's ear, on a near daily basis.  People SAW HER THERE.

And NOW, she certainly may have an effect on our lives by providing audio and video evidence that shows corruption and other icky things being done by this administration.

The Repubs decided to swim with a shark...after being told what a horrible idea that was by libs, indies, and the press...and they got bit.

And, again, the point is: Complaining about all this NOW, and not when she was hired, is hypocrisy.  She hasn't changed her fins.

[pilferk]

Quick weigh in on the Omorosa circus. She shouldn't  have been hired by Trump in the first place. Bad move.

Anyone find it odd that she is now calling Trump a bigot but previously had no problem supporting him for years? Secretly recording in the White House speaks to her character and it could bring her up on charges. Its all about hurt feelings over being fired and selling her book. 

Yeah, it's hypocritical.  Just as hypocritical as Repubs keeping mum (or, in the case of Fox News supporting) on her hiring in the first place and now complaining about her, and her character.

I agree on what it says about her character....but I'm not sure why that's surprising to you.  She's who she's been as long as she's been in the public eye.

I agree on her motivations, as well.

Doesn't make the material less compelling or less relevant, though.

[pilferk]

Cohen's plea deal is prosecutor's attempt to set up Trump

By Mark Penn, opinion contributor — 08/22/18 07:25 AM EDT
147
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/402959-cohens-plea-deal-is-prosecutors-attempt-to-set-up-trump

That entire article is a complete and utter crock of shit.  It totally ignores key facts, and pieces of information, to support a set of conclusions the author arrived at before they wrote the article (and likely before Cohens plea was even entered) .  It might be one of the WORST supported opinion pieces I've ever read by any notable news source.  It is practically TRUMPIAN in it's willful ignorance of the facts and case law (esp in relation to mens rea).

Just about every one of his assertions is actually contradicted by the legal documents that were released yesterday and by the evidence.

It's complete and total bunk. And a very cursory reading of both the transcript from the legal proceedings yesterday and reading of the legal documents shows that.  I'd invite ANYONE who thinks the above reference article has any merit to actually peruse them.

[tim_m]

So yesterday Trump claimed if he is impeached the market would crash and people would become very poor. How full of himself is this idiot.

[tim_m]

Well John McCain announced today he's ending his treatment. The end must be near. Very sad. Of course our child in chief in Ohio tonight didn't mention a word about it.

[tim_m]

So Trump cancelled Pompeo's trip to NK cause nothing has changed. I though NK was no longer a nuclear threat and Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize?

[tim_m]

Now google search is rigged against Trump and conservatives/ Can we say paranoid delusional psychosis?

[tim_m]

And another remark from captain idiot. The democrats will quickly and violently undo everything he's done if they win. How? Does this dipstick have any understanding how how government works?