Source: ABC News
By BRUCE SCHREINER, LOUISVILLE, Ky.
Whiskey workers at two Jim Beam distilleries in Kentucky have
threatened to walk off their jobs as efforts to ratify a new contract
soured ahead of a looming deadline at the world's largest bourbon
producer.
Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 111D voted
201-19 on Tuesday evening in favor of going on strike at Beam
distilleries in Clermont and Boston, Tommy Ballard, a UFCW international
representative, said Wednesday.
The current contract runs through Friday, and Beam Suntory officials
said production continued as usual Wednesday. The classic American
whiskey brand is owned by Suntory Holdings Ltd., a Japanese beverage
company.
Bargaining stretched for weeks to develop the contract offer that
workers rejected. That outcome came as a surprise to the company, and
Beam Suntory said it was trying to understand the reasons the proposal
was turned down. Company executive Kevin Smith said the offer included
wage increases along with other enhancements, including elimination of a
two-tiered wage system for almost all employees.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/jim-beam-union-workers-kentucky-vote-favor-strike-42751393
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Trump Didn't Start the Fire, But You Fuckers Can Still Burn
Posted by Rude One
A couple of days ago, former chalkboard humper Glenn Beck called on all "moral" people to oppose Donald Trump for president. His rationale spoke to just how fucking terrible things promise to be if Hillary Clinton is elected but Republicans keep even one house of Congress. See, Donnie Pussygrabber might bring about armageddon, so he's out. But if Clinton is in? Shit, that's just more of the same that we have now:
"Once elected, Hillary can be fought. Her tactics are blatant and juvenile, and battling her by means of political and procedural maneuvering or through the media, through public marches and online articles, all of that will be moral, worthy of a man of principal. Her nominees can be blocked, her proposed laws voted down."
And there you have it. The last refuge of the motherfucker who has been fucking mothers for most of his pathetic career is to treat a Democratic woman, elected in a probable landslide, like she's just another filthy nigger who dared to ascend to the presidency. Thus Beck can wipe his hands and say he's clean of the shit stains of Trump.
Rats leaving a sinking ship can at least claim not to have chewed holes in goddamn thing. But not so the stream of Republicans and assorted right-wingers who are abandoning the Trumptanic. To just about a skeevy person, they are the very slop-licking pig fuckers who brought the nation to this point by fostering bigotry through their actions against President Obama, by slashing education budgets and demanding students be taught Rush Limbaugh's version of history and civics, by ignoring poverty and stupidity and saying any programs to assist the poor made them filthy socialists, no better than the inner city people, the "welfare queens" and "gang bangers." They were either active participants in this fucking of the working class, as members of Congress or state and local officials, or as media jizz-squirters, ejaculating idiocy onto the simple-minded and convincing them that it was wisdom.
So, you know, go get fucked by all the donkeys, Glenn Beck, in your desperate attempt to say that you shouldn't be thrown onto the pyre with Trump. You can fuckin' burn, along with McCain and Ryan and Hugh Hewitt and the rest.
The same goes for evangelical Christians. In an editorial in Christianity Today, Andy Crouch implores Jesus huffers to go against Trump, saying that they should love God more than the Supreme Court. And that's all groovy, except for the fact that evangelicals spent the last four years pretending that God gives a flying fuck about lowering taxes on the wealthy, denying health insurance to people, and ensuring that everyone can get as many guns as they want when the very fucking Bible that they supposedly follow either says the exact opposite or doesn't mention it at all. (See: abortion)
Crouch calls Trump an "idolater" of money, of pussy, of many things. But evangelical leaders have been such idolaters that they have fetishized the smell of their own farts. They wanted power and cash, and that shit didn't end in the 1990s. (Yes, there are some good evangelicals. And Tiffany Trump is a possibly nice person.)
I'm not even giving a pass to conservatives who were anti-Trump from the start. Go fuck yourself, George W. and George H.W. Bush, who pushed anti-woman policies and judges. Eat shit, Lindsey Graham, who pimps war like it's the last pretty boy in the gigolo house on a late Saturday night. You fuckers aren't noble. You're just lucky you could identify someone worse than you are.
As we watch the immolation of Donald Trump, I want us to anticipate how many of these dickheads, so antithetical to what the nation is supposed to be about, will go up in flames, too. Then let's piss on their ashes.
A couple of days ago, former chalkboard humper Glenn Beck called on all "moral" people to oppose Donald Trump for president. His rationale spoke to just how fucking terrible things promise to be if Hillary Clinton is elected but Republicans keep even one house of Congress. See, Donnie Pussygrabber might bring about armageddon, so he's out. But if Clinton is in? Shit, that's just more of the same that we have now:
"Once elected, Hillary can be fought. Her tactics are blatant and juvenile, and battling her by means of political and procedural maneuvering or through the media, through public marches and online articles, all of that will be moral, worthy of a man of principal. Her nominees can be blocked, her proposed laws voted down."
And there you have it. The last refuge of the motherfucker who has been fucking mothers for most of his pathetic career is to treat a Democratic woman, elected in a probable landslide, like she's just another filthy nigger who dared to ascend to the presidency. Thus Beck can wipe his hands and say he's clean of the shit stains of Trump.
Rats leaving a sinking ship can at least claim not to have chewed holes in goddamn thing. But not so the stream of Republicans and assorted right-wingers who are abandoning the Trumptanic. To just about a skeevy person, they are the very slop-licking pig fuckers who brought the nation to this point by fostering bigotry through their actions against President Obama, by slashing education budgets and demanding students be taught Rush Limbaugh's version of history and civics, by ignoring poverty and stupidity and saying any programs to assist the poor made them filthy socialists, no better than the inner city people, the "welfare queens" and "gang bangers." They were either active participants in this fucking of the working class, as members of Congress or state and local officials, or as media jizz-squirters, ejaculating idiocy onto the simple-minded and convincing them that it was wisdom.
So, you know, go get fucked by all the donkeys, Glenn Beck, in your desperate attempt to say that you shouldn't be thrown onto the pyre with Trump. You can fuckin' burn, along with McCain and Ryan and Hugh Hewitt and the rest.
The same goes for evangelical Christians. In an editorial in Christianity Today, Andy Crouch implores Jesus huffers to go against Trump, saying that they should love God more than the Supreme Court. And that's all groovy, except for the fact that evangelicals spent the last four years pretending that God gives a flying fuck about lowering taxes on the wealthy, denying health insurance to people, and ensuring that everyone can get as many guns as they want when the very fucking Bible that they supposedly follow either says the exact opposite or doesn't mention it at all. (See: abortion)
Crouch calls Trump an "idolater" of money, of pussy, of many things. But evangelical leaders have been such idolaters that they have fetishized the smell of their own farts. They wanted power and cash, and that shit didn't end in the 1990s. (Yes, there are some good evangelicals. And Tiffany Trump is a possibly nice person.)
I'm not even giving a pass to conservatives who were anti-Trump from the start. Go fuck yourself, George W. and George H.W. Bush, who pushed anti-woman policies and judges. Eat shit, Lindsey Graham, who pimps war like it's the last pretty boy in the gigolo house on a late Saturday night. You fuckers aren't noble. You're just lucky you could identify someone worse than you are.
As we watch the immolation of Donald Trump, I want us to anticipate how many of these dickheads, so antithetical to what the nation is supposed to be about, will go up in flames, too. Then let's piss on their ashes.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Speak Truth To Trump
Evangelicals, of all people, should not be silent about Donald Trump's blatant immorality.
By Andy Crouch
By Andy Crouch
As
a non-profit journalistic organization, Christianity Today is doubly
committed to staying neutral regarding political campaigns—the law
requires it, and we serve our readers best when we give them the
information and analysis they need to make their own judgments.
We can never collude when idolatry becomes manifest, especially when it demands our public allegiance.
Just because we are neutral, however, does not mean we
are indifferent. We are especially not indifferent when the gospel is at
stake. The gospel is of infinitely greater importance than any
campaign, and one good summary of the gospel is, “Jesus is Lord.”
The true Lord of the world reigns even now, far above
any earthly ruler. His kingdom is not of this world, but glimpses of its
power and grace can be found all over the world. One day his kingdom,
and his only, will be the standard by which all earthly kingdoms are
judged, and following that judgment day, every knee will bow, in heaven,
on earth, and under the earth, as his reign is fully realized in the
renewal of all things.
The lordship of Christ places constraints on the way his
followers involve themselves, or entangle themselves, with earthly
rulers.
On the one hand, we pray for all rulers—and judging from
the example of Old Testament exiles like Daniel and New Testament
prisoners like Paul, we can even wholeheartedly pray for rulers who
directly oppose our welfare. On the other hand, we recognize that all
earthly governments partake, to a greater or lesser extent, in what the
Bible calls idolatry: substituting the creation for the Creator and the
earthly ruler for the true God.
No human being, including even the best rulers, is free
of this temptation. But some rulers and regimes are especially
outrageous in their God-substitution. After Augustus Caesar, the
emperors of Rome became more and more elaborate in their claims of
divinity with each generation—and more and more ineffective in their
governance. Communism aimed not just to replace faith in anything that
transcended the state, but to crush it.
Such systems do not just
dishonor God, they dishonor his image in persons, and in doing so they
set themselves up for dramatic destruction. We can never collude when
such idolatry becomes manifest, especially when it demands our public
allegiance. Christians in every place and time must pray for the courage
to stay standing when the alleged “voice of a god, not a man” commands
us to kneel.
This year’s presidential election in the United States presents Christian voters with an especially difficult choice.
The Democratic nominee has pursued unaccountable power
through secrecy—most evidently in the form of an email server designed
to shield her communications while in public service, but also in
lavishly compensated speeches, whose transcripts she refuses to release,
to some of the most powerful representatives of the world system. She
exemplifies the path to power preferred by the global technocratic
elite—rooted in a rigorous control of one’s image and calculated
disregard for norms that restrain less powerful actors. Such
concentration of power, which is meant to shield the powerful from the
vulnerability of accountability, actually creates far greater
vulnerabilities, putting both the leader and the community in greater
danger.
But because several of the Democratic candidate’s policy
positions are so manifestly incompatible with Christian reverence for
the lives of the most vulnerable, and because her party is so
demonstrably hostile to expressions of traditional Christian faith,
there is plenty of critique and criticism of the Democratic candidate
from Christians, including evangelical Christians.
But not all evangelical Christians—in fact, alas, most evangelical
Christians, judging by the polls—have shown the same critical judgment
when it comes to the Republican nominee. True, when given a choice,
primary voters who claimed evangelical faith largely chose other
candidates. But since his nomination, Donald Trump has been able to
count on “the evangelicals” (in his words) for a great deal of support.
This past week, the latest (though surely not last)
revelations from Trump’s past have caused many evangelical leaders to
reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump
is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone
the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and
crude boasting about sexual conquest—indeed, sexual assault—might have
been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.
Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America
today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King
James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed:
“sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is
idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to
date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in
individual lives and whole societies.
Sexuality is designed to be
properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant
faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in
sexual immorality is to make oneself and one’s desires an idol. That
Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a
singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.
And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is
an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or
dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly
celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean
the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in
short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.
Some have compared Trump to King David, who himself
committed adultery and murder. But David’s story began with a profound
reliance on God who called him from the sheepfold to the kingship, and
by the grace of God it did not end with his exploitation of Bathsheba
and Uriah. There is no parallel in Trump’s much more protracted career
of exploitation. The Lord sent his word by the prophet Nathan to
denounce David’s actions—alas, many Christian leaders who could have
spoken such prophetic confrontation to him personally have failed to do
so. David quickly and deeply repented, leaving behind the astonishing
and universally applicable lament of his own sin in Psalm 51—we have no
sign that Trump ever in his life has expressed such humility. And the
biblical narrative leaves no doubt that David’s sin had vast and
terrible consequences for his own family dynasty and for his nation. The
equivalent legacy of a Trump presidency is grievous to imagine.
Most Christians who support Trump have done so with
reluctant strategic calculation, largely based on the president’s power
to appoint members of the Supreme Court. Important issues are indeed at
stake, including the right of Christians and adherents of other
religions to uphold their vision of sexual integrity and marriage even
if they are in the cultural minority.
But there is a point at which strategy becomes its own
form of idolatry—an attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor
of the causes we support. Strategy becomes idolatry, for ancient Israel
and for us today, when we make alliances with those who seem to offer
strength—the chariots of Egypt, the vassal kings of Rome—at the expense
of our dependence on God who judges all nations, and in defiance of
God’s manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the
oppressed. Strategy becomes idolatry when we betray our deepest values
in pursuit of earthly influence. And because such strategy requires
capitulating to idols and princes and denying the true God, it
ultimately always fails.
Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our
neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see
that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we
will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to
us—in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record
of betrayal, that his rule will save us.
The US political system has never been free of idolatry,
and politics always requires compromise. Our country is flawed, but it
is also resilient. And God is not only just, but also merciful, as he
judges the nations.
In these closing weeks before the election, all
American Christians should repent, fast, and pray—no matter how we vote.
And we should hold on to hope—not in a candidate, but in our Lord
Jesus. We do not serve idols. We serve the living God. Even now he is
ready to have mercy, on us and on all who are afraid. May his name be
hallowed, his kingdom come, and his will be done on earth, as it is in
heaven.
Andy Crouch is editorial director of Christianity Today.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Donald Trump's Implosion
At the second presidential debate, the Republican paced and pouted and
sighed, but failed to patch together his collapsing campaign.
By Ron Fournier
Donald Trump knows he won't be president. He's now in full carnival-barking, network-launching, party-nuking mode—a scowling, pouting menace who threatened during a nationally televised debate to throw Hillary Clinton in jail and called her husband the most sexually abusive man in political history.
That’s ripe.
The Republican presidential nominee entered the second presidential debate with his campaign imploding over an audiotape obtained by the Washington Post that captures Trump bragging about committing sexual assault.
"I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there, and she was married,” he told Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, apparently not knowing his microphone was live. Trump continued: "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
Debate co-host Anderson Cooper told Trump, “That is sexual assault. You bragged that you sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”
“This is locker room talk,” Trump told Cooper, making clear that he doesn’t understand. After apologizing to his family and the public, Trump tried to change the subject.
Clinton wouldn’t let him off the hook, saying she has long opposed GOP presidential nominees on basis of policy and ideology. “But I never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different.” She said the recording reflects Trump’s intolerance toward women, blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims.
“So, yes, this is who Donald Trump is.”
Trump stewed, his anger simmering beneath a thin veil of calm. Desperately, he said Bill Clinton’s behavior toward women was “far worse”—as if that’s an excuse for his own behavior.
“Mine were words and his were action,” said Trump, who invited to the debate three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct or rape. “What he’s done to women, there’s never been somebody in the history of politics who’s been more abusive to women.”
Then he seized on Hillary Clinton’s role in demonizing her husband’s accusers. “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women,” he said, “and attacked them viciously.”
With Hillary Clinton staring daggers into the side of his head, Trump said of her husband, “He was impeached. He lost his license to practice law …”
This is the last thing GOP leaders, including his own running mate, Mike Pence, wanted out of Trump—a debate over the historical relevance of his sexism. At least 57 GOP members of congress and governors are not supporting Trump, with 39 announcing their non-support since the tape’s released.
After this performance, the stampede will grow.
Trump is a serial hypocrite who outdid himself with the attacks on Bill Clinton.
He once criticized Republicans for impeaching Clinton. "Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally un-important. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense.
He also attacked Monica Lewinsky’s looks. “People would have been more forgiving if (Bill Clinton) had an affair with a really beautiful woman of sophistication.”
He called Paula Jones a loser and, in 1999, called Hillary Clinton “a wonderful woman.” He also said, “She's been through more than any woman should have to bear.”
Had the Trump tape not been released, Clinton would be dealing with her own hypocrisy issues. In lucrative paid speeches, the former secretary of state discussed Wall Street and free trade in far-friendlier terms than she did during the Democratic nominating fight, according to documents released by WikiLeaks. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open boarders” throughout the Western Hemisphere,” which would come as a surprise to liberal voters who pushed her to opposed trade agreements.
But she had the better hand Sunday night, reminding voters that Trump has not apologized for attacking the parents of a slain U.S. soldier, mocking a disabled reporter, smearing a Hispanic judge, and questioning President Obama’s citizenship. “He owed the president an apology,” she said.
“You owe the president an apology,” Trump said, accusing a Clinton adviser of starting the false “birther” rumor in 2008.
Cooper and Trump pressed Clinton on her email scandal, failing to get her to budge off her deceptive talking points.
“If I win,” Trump said, “I’m going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.”
Clinton laughed and said it’s a good thing “somebody with Donald Trump’s temperament” doesn’t have such power.
“Because you’d be in jail,” Trump blurted, precisely making her point. He also called her the devil.
Clinton laughed at him again. “OK, Donald, I know you’re big on diversions today—anything to avoid talking about your campaign and how it’s exploding and how Republicans are walking away from you.”
Nothing hurts a bully likes somebody laughing at him, unless it’s people walking away from him. Trump paced and pouted and sighed. As Clinton passed between her rival and his lectern, I half expected Trump to trip her. Instead, he falsely accused the moderators of failing to ask Clinton about her email.
“One on three,” he whined. Poor Donald; he thought the two moderators and Clinton were ganging up on him.
When you’re a dying star, you can’t do anything.
By Ron Fournier
Donald Trump knows he won't be president. He's now in full carnival-barking, network-launching, party-nuking mode—a scowling, pouting menace who threatened during a nationally televised debate to throw Hillary Clinton in jail and called her husband the most sexually abusive man in political history.
That’s ripe.
The Republican presidential nominee entered the second presidential debate with his campaign imploding over an audiotape obtained by the Washington Post that captures Trump bragging about committing sexual assault.
"I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there, and she was married,” he told Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, apparently not knowing his microphone was live. Trump continued: "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
Debate co-host Anderson Cooper told Trump, “That is sexual assault. You bragged that you sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”
“This is locker room talk,” Trump told Cooper, making clear that he doesn’t understand. After apologizing to his family and the public, Trump tried to change the subject.
Clinton wouldn’t let him off the hook, saying she has long opposed GOP presidential nominees on basis of policy and ideology. “But I never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different.” She said the recording reflects Trump’s intolerance toward women, blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims.
“So, yes, this is who Donald Trump is.”
Trump stewed, his anger simmering beneath a thin veil of calm. Desperately, he said Bill Clinton’s behavior toward women was “far worse”—as if that’s an excuse for his own behavior.
“Mine were words and his were action,” said Trump, who invited to the debate three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct or rape. “What he’s done to women, there’s never been somebody in the history of politics who’s been more abusive to women.”
Then he seized on Hillary Clinton’s role in demonizing her husband’s accusers. “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women,” he said, “and attacked them viciously.”
With Hillary Clinton staring daggers into the side of his head, Trump said of her husband, “He was impeached. He lost his license to practice law …”
This is the last thing GOP leaders, including his own running mate, Mike Pence, wanted out of Trump—a debate over the historical relevance of his sexism. At least 57 GOP members of congress and governors are not supporting Trump, with 39 announcing their non-support since the tape’s released.
After this performance, the stampede will grow.
Trump is a serial hypocrite who outdid himself with the attacks on Bill Clinton.
He once criticized Republicans for impeaching Clinton. "Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally un-important. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense.
He also attacked Monica Lewinsky’s looks. “People would have been more forgiving if (Bill Clinton) had an affair with a really beautiful woman of sophistication.”
He called Paula Jones a loser and, in 1999, called Hillary Clinton “a wonderful woman.” He also said, “She's been through more than any woman should have to bear.”
Had the Trump tape not been released, Clinton would be dealing with her own hypocrisy issues. In lucrative paid speeches, the former secretary of state discussed Wall Street and free trade in far-friendlier terms than she did during the Democratic nominating fight, according to documents released by WikiLeaks. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open boarders” throughout the Western Hemisphere,” which would come as a surprise to liberal voters who pushed her to opposed trade agreements.
But she had the better hand Sunday night, reminding voters that Trump has not apologized for attacking the parents of a slain U.S. soldier, mocking a disabled reporter, smearing a Hispanic judge, and questioning President Obama’s citizenship. “He owed the president an apology,” she said.
“You owe the president an apology,” Trump said, accusing a Clinton adviser of starting the false “birther” rumor in 2008.
Cooper and Trump pressed Clinton on her email scandal, failing to get her to budge off her deceptive talking points.
“If I win,” Trump said, “I’m going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.”
Clinton laughed and said it’s a good thing “somebody with Donald Trump’s temperament” doesn’t have such power.
“Because you’d be in jail,” Trump blurted, precisely making her point. He also called her the devil.
Clinton laughed at him again. “OK, Donald, I know you’re big on diversions today—anything to avoid talking about your campaign and how it’s exploding and how Republicans are walking away from you.”
Nothing hurts a bully likes somebody laughing at him, unless it’s people walking away from him. Trump paced and pouted and sighed. As Clinton passed between her rival and his lectern, I half expected Trump to trip her. Instead, he falsely accused the moderators of failing to ask Clinton about her email.
“One on three,” he whined. Poor Donald; he thought the two moderators and Clinton were ganging up on him.
When you’re a dying star, you can’t do anything.
Billy Bush Suspended From The ‘Today’ Show
Billy Bush has been suspended from the “Today” show, according to a memo from Noah Oppenheim, the show’s executive producer.
“Let me be clear ― there is simply no excuse for Billy’s language and behavior on that tape,” the memo said. “NBC has decided to suspend Billy, pending further review of this matter.”
Earlier, reports had circulated indicating that Bush would appear on the show Monday to discuss his vulgar 2005 conversation with Donald Trump. Then, an NBC News spokesperson said Bush would not appear on Monday’s show.
Bush, a co-host of the “Today” show, was the host of “Access Hollywood” in 2005 when the lewd and explicit conversation happened. Trump joked that, as a star, he could “grab by the pussy” as he pleased, while Bush laughed. The audio, recorded as Bush and Trump exited a tour bus on the set of “Days of Our Lives,” was published on Friday by The Washington Post.
Bush has already publicly apologized for his role in the discussion.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/billy-bush-today-show-apology_us_57fa836ae4b0e655eab53813?
“Let me be clear ― there is simply no excuse for Billy’s language and behavior on that tape,” the memo said. “NBC has decided to suspend Billy, pending further review of this matter.”
Earlier, reports had circulated indicating that Bush would appear on the show Monday to discuss his vulgar 2005 conversation with Donald Trump. Then, an NBC News spokesperson said Bush would not appear on Monday’s show.
Bush, a co-host of the “Today” show, was the host of “Access Hollywood” in 2005 when the lewd and explicit conversation happened. Trump joked that, as a star, he could “grab by the pussy” as he pleased, while Bush laughed. The audio, recorded as Bush and Trump exited a tour bus on the set of “Days of Our Lives,” was published on Friday by The Washington Post.
Bush has already publicly apologized for his role in the discussion.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/billy-bush-today-show-apology_us_57fa836ae4b0e655eab53813?
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Before Republicans Ran From Donald Trump, They Let Him Win The Nomination
"I was extremely surprised by how easy people rolled over for him."
Mike
Pence (L-R), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Speaker Paul Ryan
(R-WI) laugh when a reporter began to ask Pence a question about his
criticism of Donald Trump, during a news conference last month.
After months of demurring while Trump's offensive comments piled up, dozens of leaders are finally walking away from their party's nominee. Now, many say they can't support him. Some are even urging the party to deploy some sort of last-minute maneuver to remove Trump from the GOP ticket.
But as the party engages in a collective weekend meltdown, it's important to remember that Trump's nomination wasn't inevitable. There's no doubt that Trump tapped into an anti-establishment, grassroots fervor that helped him win the nomination. But there was a months-long slog, during which time Republicans—many of whom are now denouncing him—could have have put up a fight against him.
When Trump effectively clinched the nomination by winning the Indiana primary on May 3, the Republican establishment had barely lifted a finger to deprive Trump of the nomination.
Even before Friday's revelations by The Washington Post, anti-Trump Republican strategists were expressing dismay at how easy it had become for Trump to take over the entire party.
"There was still plenty of time to slow down Trump and to stop Trump," Miller said.
When Bush dropped out of the primary after the South Carolina primary on February 20, Miller went to work for Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump effort funded largely by billionaires Joe and Marlene Ricketts.
"There was still plenty of time to slow down Trump and to stop Trump," Miller recalled. He said the super PAC tried to get Republicans leaders in upcoming primary states to object to Trump, from governors, congressmen, and senators to retired politicians and conservative pundits. His group had almost no luck.
"You know, this was doable," Miller said. "And because a lot of politicians did not want to take the risk, because a lot of them did not feel like Ted Cruz was that much better—which was BS—nobody stuck their neck out there. And I, you know, I can't believe it."
Not only did Republican officials refuse to stick their necks out, neither did more than a handful of Republican donors. "The Ricketts, to their credit, stuck their neck out on this and created this PAC," Miller said. "After Jeb dropped out there were a few other donors who got on board. But it was a small number of donors who were carrying a big load on this for sure."
In the end, even that wasn't enough. The Ricketts later switched sides and gave $1 million to a super PAC supporting Trump.
Of course, Trump hasn't changed in the months since he was just one of 17 candidates. Back then, he was still a birther with a history of misogynist behavior (which he continued during the campaign), spreading fear towards immigrants and Muslims. And yet, as Miller put it, the establishment just "rolled over for him."
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Here Are All the Republicans Who Have Abandoned Trump’s Ship So Far
By Hannah Levintova
A growing number of Republicans have condemned their party's nominee in the wake of the Washington Post's scoop Friday featuring footage in which Trump boasts of groping and kissing women without their consent.
The video has led to a slew of condemnations from horrified Republicans, some of whom have called for Trump to step down and even for running mate Mike Pence, a life-long religious conservative, to step in as the party's candidate for president. Here's how it's played out so far:
8:46 PM EDT, October 7: Sen Mark Kirk of Illinois, who withdrew his support for Trump in June, tweets:
9:50 PM, October 7: Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who previously supported Trump:
12:29 AM, October 8: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posts a Facebook video affirming his opposition to Trump and adding: "I respectfully ask you, with all due respect, to step aside. Step down, allow someone else to carry the banner of these principles."
12:49 AM, October 8: Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia, who has not endorsed Trump throughout this campaign: "This is disgusting, vile, and disqualifying. No woman should ever be subjected to this type of obscene behavior and it is unbecoming of anybody seeking high office. In light of these comments, Donald Trump should step aside and allow our party to replace him with Mike Pence or another appropriate nominee."
1:56 AM, October 8: Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah tells a local TV station: "I'm incredibly disappointed in our party's candidate am therefore calling for him to step aside and to allow Mike Pence to lead our party."
8:06 AM October 8: Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who has always opposed Trump, tweets:
1:05 PM, October 8: Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who said in August he wouldn't vote for Trump, told the Morning Call on Saturday that Trump's statement's "are indefensible and disturbing coming from an individual seeking the nation's highest office. Given his past erratic behavior and incendiary comments, the latest revelations regarding Donald Trump do not come as a surprise. The comments highlight the reason why I could not support the nominee this cycle." According to the New York Times, Dent also urged Trump to withdraw from the race and said that if Trump refuses to do so, the GOP should abandon the candidate and shift its focus to down-ballot races.
1:30 PM, October 8: Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois:
The video has led to a slew of condemnations from horrified Republicans, some of whom have called for Trump to step down and even for running mate Mike Pence, a life-long religious conservative, to step in as the party's candidate for president. Here's how it's played out so far:
8:46 PM EDT, October 7: Sen Mark Kirk of Illinois, who withdrew his support for Trump in June, tweets:
9:07 PM, October 7: Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah tells Fox 13 News: "I'm out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine.".@realDonaldTrump should drop out. @GOP should engage rules for emergency replacement.— Mark Kirk (@SenatorKirk) October 8, 2016
9:50 PM, October 7: Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who previously supported Trump:
10:16 PM, October 7 (approximately): Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado, who already didn't support Trump, issues a statement: "For the good of the country, and to give Republicans a chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump should step aside. His defeat at this point seems almost certain and four years of Hillary Clinton is not what is best for this country. Mr. Trump should put the country first and do the right thing."Donald Trump's statements are beyond offensive & despicable. While I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton, I will not vote for Trump. #utpol— Gary R. Herbert (@HerbertForUtah) October 8, 2016
12:29 AM, October 8: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posts a Facebook video affirming his opposition to Trump and adding: "I respectfully ask you, with all due respect, to step aside. Step down, allow someone else to carry the banner of these principles."
12:49 AM, October 8: Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia, who has not endorsed Trump throughout this campaign: "This is disgusting, vile, and disqualifying. No woman should ever be subjected to this type of obscene behavior and it is unbecoming of anybody seeking high office. In light of these comments, Donald Trump should step aside and allow our party to replace him with Mike Pence or another appropriate nominee."
1:56 AM, October 8: Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah tells a local TV station: "I'm incredibly disappointed in our party's candidate am therefore calling for him to step aside and to allow Mike Pence to lead our party."
8:06 AM October 8: Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who has always opposed Trump, tweets:
10:02 AM, October 8: Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama:Character matters.@realDonaldTrump is obviously not going to win.— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) October 8, 2016
But he can still make an honorable move:
Step aside & let Mike Pence try.
11:14 AM, October 8: Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho:Donald Trump's behavior makes him unacceptable as a candidate for president, and I won't vote for him.— Rep. Martha Roby (@RepMarthaRoby) October 8, 2016
Full statement: pic.twitter.com/Ge7GU1TSvm
11:37 AM, October 8: Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire:I can no longer endorse Donald Trump. Read my full statement: pic.twitter.com/lfa9mYZbdC— Senator Mike Crapo (@MikeCrapo) October 8, 2016
12:46 PM, October 8: South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard:I will not vote for Donald Trump. Read my statement here: pic.twitter.com/F8zajgDZpg— Kelly Ayotte (@KellyAyotte) October 8, 2016
12:51 PM, October 8: Sen. John Thune of South Dakota:Enough is enough. Donald Trump should withdraw in favor of Governor Mike Pence. This election is too important.— Gov. Dennis Daugaard (@SDGovDaugaard) October 8, 2016
12:58 PM, October 8 (approximately): Rep Bradley Byrne of Alabama releases a statement: "Donald Trump's comments regarding women were disgraceful and appalling. There are absolutely no circumstances under which it would ever be appropriate to speak of women in such a way. It is now clear Donald Trump is not fit to be President of the United States and cannot defeat Hillary Clinton. I believe he should step aside and allow Governor Pence to lead the Republican ticket."Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately.— Senator John Thune (@SenJohnThune) October 8, 2016
1:05 PM, October 8: Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who said in August he wouldn't vote for Trump, told the Morning Call on Saturday that Trump's statement's "are indefensible and disturbing coming from an individual seeking the nation's highest office. Given his past erratic behavior and incendiary comments, the latest revelations regarding Donald Trump do not come as a surprise. The comments highlight the reason why I could not support the nominee this cycle." According to the New York Times, Dent also urged Trump to withdraw from the race and said that if Trump refuses to do so, the GOP should abandon the candidate and shift its focus to down-ballot races.
1:30 PM, October 8: Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois:
1:33 PM, October 8: Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, who declined to endorse Trump in June, said today, according to the New York Times:My statement on Donald Trump and the presidential election —> pic.twitter.com/VUiHAGgkLb— Rodney Davis (@ElectRodney) October 8, 2016
1:56 PM, October 8: Rep. Joe Heck, who is running for Senate in Nevada, releases his full statement from a Saturday rally. An excerpt:.@RepFredUpton:— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) October 8, 2016
"I urge him to think about our country over his own candidacy and carefully consider stepping aside from the ticket.”
1:59 PM, October 8: Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri:@Heck4Nevada pulls support from @realDonaldTrump - calls for him to step down. #Nevada pic.twitter.com/IEukSeqUjF— Nathan O'Neal (@NateNews3LV) October 8, 2016
2:21 PM, October 8: Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska:Another one: Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner withdraws Trump support, calls for Pence to head the ticket pic.twitter.com/WwOmyTIfzZ— Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) October 8, 2016
2:35 PM, October 8: Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska:Im calling on Trump to step aside for Gov. Pence. Trump can’t lead on critical issue of ending dom violence & sexual assault. Full statement pic.twitter.com/e47h6MAdmH— SenDanSullivan (@SenDanSullivan) October 8, 2016
The comments made by Mr. Trump were disgusting and totally unacceptable under any circumstance. (1/2)— Deb Fischer (@DebFischerNE) October 8, 2016
3:04 PM, October 8: Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado:It would be wise for him to step aside and allow Mike Pence to serve as our party's nominee. (2/2)— Deb Fischer (@DebFischerNE) October 8, 2016
3:19 PM, October 8: Rep. Steve Knight of California:If Donald Trump wishes to defeat Hillary Clinton, he should do the only thing that will allow us to do so - step aside. My full statement: pic.twitter.com/hadKP4gIrr— Cory Gardner (@CoryGardner) October 8, 2016
Vulnerable Rep. @SteveKnight25 (R-Calif.) issues second statement of day clarifying he will NOT vote for Trump pic.twitter.com/J8qGtb7SX3— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) October 8, 2016
Friday, October 7, 2016
Republicans Panic As Hillary Clinton Seizes The Lead In Another New Ohio Poll
By Sean Colarossi
Republicans insist that Hillary Clinton has given up on winning Ohio in November, but another new poll gives her the lead in the Buckeye State – and with room to expand her edge.
According to the poll released by Public Policy Polling (PPP), Clinton has taken the lead over Trump after trailing him by three points in their previous poll of the state.
In a contest including third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, Clinton leads Trump 44 to 43 percent. In a two-way race, the Democratic nominee leads 48 to 47.
This is the second poll in as many days that shows Clinton pulling ahead of Trump in Ohio. While it’s certainly a close race between the two nominees, PPP notes that Clinton has room to grow.
According to the release:
The survey also indicates that the bombshell news that Trump may not have paid federal income taxes for decades is also hurting him in the state.
Just 35 percent of Ohio voters think Trump pays his fair share in federal taxes, while 47 percent think he doesn’t. With the voters that think he doesn’t pay enough, Clinton is winning by a 77 to 9 margin.
Overall, sixty-one percent say the Republican nominee should release his tax returns.
With a month to go until Election Day, a state that has been favorable to Trump all along is starting to creep into the Clinton column.
Republicans insist Hillary Clinton has given up on Ohio, but new polls show her surging in the Buckeye State.
Republicans insist that Hillary Clinton has given up on winning Ohio in November, but another new poll gives her the lead in the Buckeye State – and with room to expand her edge.
According to the poll released by Public Policy Polling (PPP), Clinton has taken the lead over Trump after trailing him by three points in their previous poll of the state.
In a contest including third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, Clinton leads Trump 44 to 43 percent. In a two-way race, the Democratic nominee leads 48 to 47.
This is the second poll in as many days that shows Clinton pulling ahead of Trump in Ohio. While it’s certainly a close race between the two nominees, PPP notes that Clinton has room to grow.
According to the release:
One thing that could help Clinton win Ohio in the end is that voters in the state say they’d rather have four more years of Barack Obama as President than Trump, 51/45. If Clinton can effectively convince voters she would be the continuation of the country’s current direction that they prefer to the sharp pivot a Trump presidency would represent, it could put her over the top here.As Barack Obama’s approval rating continues to soar and he prepares to criss-cross the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton in the final weeks of this campaign, the current president could help put her over the top in the Buckeye State where a majority of voters approve of his job performance.
The survey also indicates that the bombshell news that Trump may not have paid federal income taxes for decades is also hurting him in the state.
Just 35 percent of Ohio voters think Trump pays his fair share in federal taxes, while 47 percent think he doesn’t. With the voters that think he doesn’t pay enough, Clinton is winning by a 77 to 9 margin.
Overall, sixty-one percent say the Republican nominee should release his tax returns.
With a month to go until Election Day, a state that has been favorable to Trump all along is starting to creep into the Clinton column.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Fox News Is Suicidal After Hillary Clinton Trounced Trump At Presidential Debate
By Jason Easley
Fox News is nearly suicidal after Donald Trump was routed by Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate.
Brit Hume immediately criticized Trump for his facial expressions saying that Trump looked annoyed. Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Juan Williams moaned and groaned that Trump only briefly talked about Clinton’s emails.
Kelly said, “There was a lot of time that he was given to exploit the issue, which was a major issue in the campaign, and it went unused.”
The Fox coverage then cut to Sean Hannity backstage with Trump for some post-debate propaganda.
After Trump and Hannity had cuddled for a bit, the coverage went back to Baier and Kelly. Megyn Kelly pointed out that Clinton sliced and diced Trump. Even Fox News noticed that Clinton was on the offensive during the debate while Trump played defense.
The mood of the coverage at Fox News is completely glum and dire, which is the biggest sign yet that Republicans know that Donald Trump did poorly in the first presidential debate.
Fox News is nearly suicidal after Donald Trump was routed by Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate.
Brit Hume immediately criticized Trump for his facial expressions saying that Trump looked annoyed. Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Juan Williams moaned and groaned that Trump only briefly talked about Clinton’s emails.
Kelly said, “There was a lot of time that he was given to exploit the issue, which was a major issue in the campaign, and it went unused.”
The Fox coverage then cut to Sean Hannity backstage with Trump for some post-debate propaganda.
After Trump and Hannity had cuddled for a bit, the coverage went back to Baier and Kelly. Megyn Kelly pointed out that Clinton sliced and diced Trump. Even Fox News noticed that Clinton was on the offensive during the debate while Trump played defense.
The mood of the coverage at Fox News is completely glum and dire, which is the biggest sign yet that Republicans know that Donald Trump did poorly in the first presidential debate.
Monday, September 26, 2016
How To Beat Trump In A Debate
By Jim Newell
Successfully debating Donald Trump is the hardest thing that should be an easy thing in our world today, right up there with beating Donald Trump in an election with adult voters. In debate after debate after debate during the Republican primaries, Trump showed little understanding of or curiosity about public policy, instigated childish fights with his rivals, and disappeared from the conversation altogether when it bored him. He skipped one debate because he didn’t like Fox News’ sass. In another that he did attend, he bragged about the size of his penis. Never forget that he bragged about the size of his penis in a debate among candidates vying for the United States presidency. And never forget that, either in spite or because of all this, he won the Republican nomination for said presidency and is now polling neck-and-neck with his Democratic competitor, Hillary Clinton.
During the primaries Trump was able to get away with being his unvarnished self. In creating his primary plurality, he hardened for himself a national majority in opposition to him. The gains he’s seen in polling during September have come from both Clinton missteps and a more disciplined operation under new Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has tamed her candidate’s feral impulses at the margins. There are even murmurs that Trump is preparing for Monday’s first debate at Hofstra University, which might have less to do with his domestication than with the fact that he is about to go in front of the biggest television audience he’s ever had. What keeps the Clinton campaign awake at night must be the possibility of Trump passing through this first debate with a calm and poise for which he is not known. The Trump campaign’s hope is to trick people, white-collar white people in particular, into believing that he is indeed calm and poised. Once Trump is onstage and under duress, though, he will be tempted to revert to his nature. Clinton’s goal will be to induce such behavior—to coax out the real Trump, the one who “won” in the primary by losing the majority of the country. Here’s how she can do that.
Ask him to explain pretty much anything.
The large Republican primary field didn’t just help Trump by allowing him to cruise to early victories with relatively modest pluralities. It also helped him in the minute-to-minute unfolding of the early debates. He could get in his insults against Jeb Bush or Rand Paul or some other foil, and then, as the conversation—as it occasionally did—ventured into more substantive policy grounds, he could go into hiding for tens of minutes at a time as, say, Paul and Chris Christie argued about surveillance programs or medical marijuana. The stage will be smaller Monday night, as Trump competes in the first one-on-one presidential debate of his life. There will be no hiding.
It’s not necessarily in Clinton’s interest to turn this into a patronizing quiz show. Voters don’t cast their ballots based on which candidates best trill the rhotic consonants in foreign leaders’ names. But there are things that people expect their presidents to know, and on this count Trump tripped up a few times during the primary debates.
In the Dec. 15 debate held in Las Vegas, CNN guest questioner Hugh Hewitt asked Trump which element of the aging nuclear triad he felt was most urgently in need of an upgrade. Trump’s response was a jumble of nonsense about Iraq and Syria that made clear he had never heard the term, which refers to land-, air-, or sea-based systems for delivering nuclear weapons. That’s not great. But it’s deeper than terminology: It was clear that he had never considered the question of nuclear arsenal maintenance. He did, however, say that, “I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” Indeed, big bomb go boom.
Trump is running strongly against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Hillary Clinton claims to be against TPP, too, though no one really believes her.) When asked for even modest details of the trade pact, though, Trump tends to stumble. In the Nov. 10 debate, Trump went on about how “It’s a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door, and totally take advantage of everyone.” For all of the trade deal’s opacity and complexity, it is indeed not “designed” to allow China to do that. It is designed to corner China into reforming its economy. Rand Paul chimed in after Trump’s spiel to point out that China is not a signatory to the deal, and Trump had little to say in response. The next day Trump and his team retrofitted their version of the exchange to make it sound as if he knew exactly what he was saying and what he meant. This explanation, too, was lacking.
Clinton doesn’t need Trump to name the presidents and prime ministers of foreign countries. What she—or the moderators—could do, though, is ask him to explain the details of any of the policy proposals other people have written up on his behalf. How many weeks of paid leave are offered in Trump’s child care plans? Who would and wouldn’t be covered? Trump could be asked the cost of either his tax or education plan. Even better: What are his tax and education plans?
One of the most effective versions of this model in the primary was when Sen. Marco Rubio, during the Feb. 25 debate, asked Trump to explain his health care plan. This is where Trump went on about “the lines,” referring to selling insurance across state lines, but had little else to offer beyond repetition.
Clinton doesn’t just need to ask him about his own plans. She could ask him to explain anything. How does Medicaid work and how would he change it? What does he dislike most about the Iranian nuclear deal? What’s the latest from Syria? Don’t wander too far in the weeds, but try to find some way to get him to move past the few superficialities he’ll have memorized. Remember: Trump does not know what he’s talking about. Ever. This fact gets obscured from time to time whenever we start talking about Trump pivots and message discipline and the like, as if the problem simply were a lack of grace. And we should be careful to avoid the fallacy so common on the left that politics is about knowing more stuff than the other guy. But the simple truth is that Trump does not understand the basic grammar of the job he’s seeking.
Get him to say something incredibly sexist.
An observation: Hillary Clinton has faced sexist criticisms in her career. You may have noticed this.
A twin observation: Donald Trump has dished out a lot of sexism in his career. You may have noticed this, too. One dynamic of the debate, then, is whether Trump will be able to stop himself from making some outward expression of his sexism—a remark, a gesture, anything.
There was one woman in the field of 16 competitors dispatched by Trump en route to the nomination.
Though Carly Fiorina posed little threat, Trump was unable to control himself against her. He was unable, as reported by Rolling Stone, to prevent himself from saying about Fiorina: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!” This was something that he had to say.
Trump did not acquit himself well when that quote was brought up in the (interminably long) Sept. 16 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Trump had claimed that by “face,” he meant her persona. Moderator Jake Tapper asked Fiorina to respond to it all. With great poise, she said, “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,” to roaring applause. Trump, to groans, replied: “I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman.”
Fiorina did shoot up in the polls after this debate, before the usual combination of additional scrutiny and unsustainable media oxygen sent her back down to the realm of also-rans.
Hillary Clinton has experience in one-on-one debates with male counterparts who express fatally boorish behavior. It will be the test of a lifetime for Trump to make it through one debate without patronizing her similarly; he needs to, though, if he’s to recover some of his numbers among suburban college-educated women, the traditionally Republican demographic that Trump has bled from his wherevers. Don’t let him. Mention some of his sexist remarks. Maybe he’ll keep it together during the debate, and wait until the next day to say something terrible.
Draw out his childishness.
Trump needs more voters coming out of the debate thinking that he’s a properly matured adult, rather than a child. One common trait among children is their inability to manage their passing rages. The proper response here is not for Clinton to respond in kind. She’s not a natural heckler, and when people who aren’t natural hecklers try to meet Trump on his level, they get mauled. Trump is the only candidate who can pull off his brand of childishness. That’s not a compliment.
Sen. Ted Cruz, the best debater in the Republican primary field, demonstrated the best way of managing Trump’s puerility. It was the Mar. 3 debate. Cruz prodded Trump by bringing up a piece of unwelcome information, in this case the pending lawsuit against Trump University, and how he might be on the stand for a “fraud trial” during the general election campaign. This had the instant effect of agitating Trump into sputtering interruption. Cruz was ready.
Don’t do this stuff.
Don’t think for a second that Hillary can’t blow this. Oh, she can.
Imagine a debate in which Trump keeps his cool. In which he treats Hillary Clinton respectfully and barely even looks at her. In her efforts to provoke him, she comes off as the desperate one. She does the thing where she addresses this generation’s electorate with the last generation’s panders, like invoking 9/11 to defend her lucrative dives into the Wall Street fundraising pool.
Her internal algorithm for divining the proper positions has a tendency to output jibberish—the meeping nonposition of the career pol. Recall her waffling in the 2007 debate about whether she would support drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants.
No, she finally answered. Two weeks later.
Clinton hasn’t gotten much better in this respect. She still can’t quite nail down concise answers for either her private email server or what safeguards she put in place against foreign influence-peddling through the Clinton Foundation during her time at State.
She’s not a bad debater. She’s far better in this environment than she is in big auditoriums, trying to rile up the crowds at her rallies. But she’s the sort of non-natural politician who, when she needs to force something, comes off very obviously as someone who is forcing something.
What Clinton needs to remember is that there’s no pressure here. Only some 100 million people will be watching, and the only thing she could blow is the presidential election. If she loses the election, no big deal. America will just be turning control of the world over to a lunatic, ending liberal democracy’s solid post-war run at seven decades. She might faint or make one tremendous, highly replayable gaffe. But again, the only consequence there would be the end of the West. It’s fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Successfully debating Donald Trump is the hardest thing that should be an easy thing in our world today, right up there with beating Donald Trump in an election with adult voters. In debate after debate after debate during the Republican primaries, Trump showed little understanding of or curiosity about public policy, instigated childish fights with his rivals, and disappeared from the conversation altogether when it bored him. He skipped one debate because he didn’t like Fox News’ sass. In another that he did attend, he bragged about the size of his penis. Never forget that he bragged about the size of his penis in a debate among candidates vying for the United States presidency. And never forget that, either in spite or because of all this, he won the Republican nomination for said presidency and is now polling neck-and-neck with his Democratic competitor, Hillary Clinton.
During the primaries Trump was able to get away with being his unvarnished self. In creating his primary plurality, he hardened for himself a national majority in opposition to him. The gains he’s seen in polling during September have come from both Clinton missteps and a more disciplined operation under new Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has tamed her candidate’s feral impulses at the margins. There are even murmurs that Trump is preparing for Monday’s first debate at Hofstra University, which might have less to do with his domestication than with the fact that he is about to go in front of the biggest television audience he’s ever had. What keeps the Clinton campaign awake at night must be the possibility of Trump passing through this first debate with a calm and poise for which he is not known. The Trump campaign’s hope is to trick people, white-collar white people in particular, into believing that he is indeed calm and poised. Once Trump is onstage and under duress, though, he will be tempted to revert to his nature. Clinton’s goal will be to induce such behavior—to coax out the real Trump, the one who “won” in the primary by losing the majority of the country. Here’s how she can do that.
Ask him to explain pretty much anything.
The large Republican primary field didn’t just help Trump by allowing him to cruise to early victories with relatively modest pluralities. It also helped him in the minute-to-minute unfolding of the early debates. He could get in his insults against Jeb Bush or Rand Paul or some other foil, and then, as the conversation—as it occasionally did—ventured into more substantive policy grounds, he could go into hiding for tens of minutes at a time as, say, Paul and Chris Christie argued about surveillance programs or medical marijuana. The stage will be smaller Monday night, as Trump competes in the first one-on-one presidential debate of his life. There will be no hiding.
It’s not necessarily in Clinton’s interest to turn this into a patronizing quiz show. Voters don’t cast their ballots based on which candidates best trill the rhotic consonants in foreign leaders’ names. But there are things that people expect their presidents to know, and on this count Trump tripped up a few times during the primary debates.
In the Dec. 15 debate held in Las Vegas, CNN guest questioner Hugh Hewitt asked Trump which element of the aging nuclear triad he felt was most urgently in need of an upgrade. Trump’s response was a jumble of nonsense about Iraq and Syria that made clear he had never heard the term, which refers to land-, air-, or sea-based systems for delivering nuclear weapons. That’s not great. But it’s deeper than terminology: It was clear that he had never considered the question of nuclear arsenal maintenance. He did, however, say that, “I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” Indeed, big bomb go boom.
Trump is running strongly against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Hillary Clinton claims to be against TPP, too, though no one really believes her.) When asked for even modest details of the trade pact, though, Trump tends to stumble. In the Nov. 10 debate, Trump went on about how “It’s a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door, and totally take advantage of everyone.” For all of the trade deal’s opacity and complexity, it is indeed not “designed” to allow China to do that. It is designed to corner China into reforming its economy. Rand Paul chimed in after Trump’s spiel to point out that China is not a signatory to the deal, and Trump had little to say in response. The next day Trump and his team retrofitted their version of the exchange to make it sound as if he knew exactly what he was saying and what he meant. This explanation, too, was lacking.
Clinton doesn’t need Trump to name the presidents and prime ministers of foreign countries. What she—or the moderators—could do, though, is ask him to explain the details of any of the policy proposals other people have written up on his behalf. How many weeks of paid leave are offered in Trump’s child care plans? Who would and wouldn’t be covered? Trump could be asked the cost of either his tax or education plan. Even better: What are his tax and education plans?
One of the most effective versions of this model in the primary was when Sen. Marco Rubio, during the Feb. 25 debate, asked Trump to explain his health care plan. This is where Trump went on about “the lines,” referring to selling insurance across state lines, but had little else to offer beyond repetition.
Clinton doesn’t just need to ask him about his own plans. She could ask him to explain anything. How does Medicaid work and how would he change it? What does he dislike most about the Iranian nuclear deal? What’s the latest from Syria? Don’t wander too far in the weeds, but try to find some way to get him to move past the few superficialities he’ll have memorized. Remember: Trump does not know what he’s talking about. Ever. This fact gets obscured from time to time whenever we start talking about Trump pivots and message discipline and the like, as if the problem simply were a lack of grace. And we should be careful to avoid the fallacy so common on the left that politics is about knowing more stuff than the other guy. But the simple truth is that Trump does not understand the basic grammar of the job he’s seeking.
Get him to say something incredibly sexist.
An observation: Hillary Clinton has faced sexist criticisms in her career. You may have noticed this.
A twin observation: Donald Trump has dished out a lot of sexism in his career. You may have noticed this, too. One dynamic of the debate, then, is whether Trump will be able to stop himself from making some outward expression of his sexism—a remark, a gesture, anything.
There was one woman in the field of 16 competitors dispatched by Trump en route to the nomination.
Though Carly Fiorina posed little threat, Trump was unable to control himself against her. He was unable, as reported by Rolling Stone, to prevent himself from saying about Fiorina: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!” This was something that he had to say.
Trump did not acquit himself well when that quote was brought up in the (interminably long) Sept. 16 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Trump had claimed that by “face,” he meant her persona. Moderator Jake Tapper asked Fiorina to respond to it all. With great poise, she said, “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,” to roaring applause. Trump, to groans, replied: “I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman.”
Fiorina did shoot up in the polls after this debate, before the usual combination of additional scrutiny and unsustainable media oxygen sent her back down to the realm of also-rans.
Hillary Clinton has experience in one-on-one debates with male counterparts who express fatally boorish behavior. It will be the test of a lifetime for Trump to make it through one debate without patronizing her similarly; he needs to, though, if he’s to recover some of his numbers among suburban college-educated women, the traditionally Republican demographic that Trump has bled from his wherevers. Don’t let him. Mention some of his sexist remarks. Maybe he’ll keep it together during the debate, and wait until the next day to say something terrible.
Draw out his childishness.
Trump needs more voters coming out of the debate thinking that he’s a properly matured adult, rather than a child. One common trait among children is their inability to manage their passing rages. The proper response here is not for Clinton to respond in kind. She’s not a natural heckler, and when people who aren’t natural hecklers try to meet Trump on his level, they get mauled. Trump is the only candidate who can pull off his brand of childishness. That’s not a compliment.
Sen. Ted Cruz, the best debater in the Republican primary field, demonstrated the best way of managing Trump’s puerility. It was the Mar. 3 debate. Cruz prodded Trump by bringing up a piece of unwelcome information, in this case the pending lawsuit against Trump University, and how he might be on the stand for a “fraud trial” during the general election campaign. This had the instant effect of agitating Trump into sputtering interruption. Cruz was ready.
CRUZ: And with Hillary Clinton ...
TRUMP: Give me a break.
CRUZ: ... pointing out that he supported her four times in her presidential race.
TRUMP: It’s a minor civil case.
CRUZ: Donald, learn not to interrupt. It’s not complicated.
TRUMP: There are many, many civil cases.
CRUZ: Count to 10, Donald. Count to 10.
TRUMP: Give me a break.
CRUZ: Count to 10.This shut him up in the moment, which made him even angrier. When it was finally his time to speak, he barked about how he was much higher in the polls. Trump’s polling position in the general election has sharply improved since Labor Day, but hardly into bragging territory. He’ll be without that crutch this time.
Don’t do this stuff.
Don’t think for a second that Hillary can’t blow this. Oh, she can.
Imagine a debate in which Trump keeps his cool. In which he treats Hillary Clinton respectfully and barely even looks at her. In her efforts to provoke him, she comes off as the desperate one. She does the thing where she addresses this generation’s electorate with the last generation’s panders, like invoking 9/11 to defend her lucrative dives into the Wall Street fundraising pool.
Her internal algorithm for divining the proper positions has a tendency to output jibberish—the meeping nonposition of the career pol. Recall her waffling in the 2007 debate about whether she would support drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants.
No, she finally answered. Two weeks later.
Clinton hasn’t gotten much better in this respect. She still can’t quite nail down concise answers for either her private email server or what safeguards she put in place against foreign influence-peddling through the Clinton Foundation during her time at State.
She’s not a bad debater. She’s far better in this environment than she is in big auditoriums, trying to rile up the crowds at her rallies. But she’s the sort of non-natural politician who, when she needs to force something, comes off very obviously as someone who is forcing something.
What Clinton needs to remember is that there’s no pressure here. Only some 100 million people will be watching, and the only thing she could blow is the presidential election. If she loses the election, no big deal. America will just be turning control of the world over to a lunatic, ending liberal democracy’s solid post-war run at seven decades. She might faint or make one tremendous, highly replayable gaffe. But again, the only consequence there would be the end of the West. It’s fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Elizabeth Warren To Wells Fargo CEO: You Should Resign
Wells Fargo committed massive fraud and blamed it on its lowest level
employees. Senator Elizabeth Warren isn’t having it. Cenk Uygur, host of
The Young Turks, breaks it down.
"Facing off with the CEO whose massive bank appropriated customers' information to create millions of bogus accounts, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., had sharp questions Tuesday for Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. She said Stumpf made millions of dollars in the "scam," telling him, "You should resign ... and you should be criminally investigated."
As we've reported before, Wells Fargo is paying $185 million in penalties for acts that date to at least to 2011. The firm says it fired some 5,300 employees who were found to have created false accounts as it sought to increase "cross-selling" — building the number of accounts each customer holds...
The exchanges between Warren and Stumpf were among the sharpest, but other senators also pressed the executive about what have become hot topics as public outrage has grown over the case. Here's some of what panel Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and others wanted to know:
Whether Stumpf regards the case as one of fraudWhether the bank will "claw back" any of the millions it has paid to former executive Carrie Tolstedt, who is retiring with nearly $125 million
How the bank will help customers whose credit ratings have been hurt by the fake accounts…”*
Read more here: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/20/494738797/you-should-resign-watch-sen-elizabeth-warren-grill-wells-fargo-ceo-john-stumpf
Hosts: Cenk Uygur
Cast: Cenk Uygur
"Facing off with the CEO whose massive bank appropriated customers' information to create millions of bogus accounts, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., had sharp questions Tuesday for Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. She said Stumpf made millions of dollars in the "scam," telling him, "You should resign ... and you should be criminally investigated."
As we've reported before, Wells Fargo is paying $185 million in penalties for acts that date to at least to 2011. The firm says it fired some 5,300 employees who were found to have created false accounts as it sought to increase "cross-selling" — building the number of accounts each customer holds...
The exchanges between Warren and Stumpf were among the sharpest, but other senators also pressed the executive about what have become hot topics as public outrage has grown over the case. Here's some of what panel Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and others wanted to know:
Whether Stumpf regards the case as one of fraudWhether the bank will "claw back" any of the millions it has paid to former executive Carrie Tolstedt, who is retiring with nearly $125 million
How the bank will help customers whose credit ratings have been hurt by the fake accounts…”*
Read more here: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/20/494738797/you-should-resign-watch-sen-elizabeth-warren-grill-wells-fargo-ceo-john-stumpf
Hosts: Cenk Uygur
Cast: Cenk Uygur
The National Anthem Verse We Don't Sing Anymore
It turns out Francis Scott Key was really racist, and his song was too.
Now we sing the abridged version of The Star-Spangled Banner. Cenk
Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.
"BEFORE A PRESEASON GAME on Friday, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When he explained why, he only spoke about the present: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. … There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Twitter then went predictably nuts, with at least one 49ers fan burning Kaepernick’s jersey.
Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today, it would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.
Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” Americans hazily remember, was written by Francis Scott Key about the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812. But we don’t ever talk about how the War of 1812 was a war of aggression that began with an attempt by the U.S. to grab Canada from the British Empire. “
Read more here: https://theintercept.com/2016/08/28/colin-kaepernick-is-righter-than-you-know-the-national-anthem-is-a-celebration-of-slavery/
Hosts: Cenk Uygur
Cast: Cenk Uygur
"BEFORE A PRESEASON GAME on Friday, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When he explained why, he only spoke about the present: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. … There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Twitter then went predictably nuts, with at least one 49ers fan burning Kaepernick’s jersey.
Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today, it would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.
Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” Americans hazily remember, was written by Francis Scott Key about the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812. But we don’t ever talk about how the War of 1812 was a war of aggression that began with an attempt by the U.S. to grab Canada from the British Empire. “
Read more here: https://theintercept.com/2016/08/28/colin-kaepernick-is-righter-than-you-know-the-national-anthem-is-a-celebration-of-slavery/
Hosts: Cenk Uygur
Cast: Cenk Uygur
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
US Bill Seeks First Native American Land Grab In 100 Years
Source: Telesur
Protesters demonstrate against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux
reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, Sept. 9, 2016. | Photo: Reuters
Published 19 September 2016
Two Republican congresspeople are seeking to pass a controversial bill through the U.S. House of Representatives that would seek the first land grab of Native American lands in 100 years, members of the Ute nation have warned.
The Utah Public Lands Initiative was proposed by Utah Congressperson Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz and seeks to “roll back federal policy to the late 1800's when Indian lands and resources were taken from tribal nations for the benefit of others,” the Ute Business Committee said in an article for the Salt Lake Tribune Saturday.
Bishop and Chaffetz will present the bill to the House in few weeks, and if passed it would see 18 million acres of public lands in Eastern Utah downgraded from protected lands and turned into oil and gas drilling zones that are exempted from environmental protections, Think Progress reported earlier this year when the bill was unveiled.
“The actions of Bishop and Chaffetz would seek to divest the Ute Indian Tribe of their ancestral homelands,” the committee added while also bringing back “failed policies of tribal land dispossession that have had a devastating and lasting impact upon tribal nations for the past century.”
Read more: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Bill-Seeks-First-Native-American-Land-Grab-in-100-Years-20160919-0029.html
Protesters demonstrate against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux
reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, Sept. 9, 2016. | Photo: Reuters
Published 19 September 2016
Two Republican congresspeople are seeking to pass a controversial bill through the U.S. House of Representatives that would seek the first land grab of Native American lands in 100 years, members of the Ute nation have warned.
The Utah Public Lands Initiative was proposed by Utah Congressperson Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz and seeks to “roll back federal policy to the late 1800's when Indian lands and resources were taken from tribal nations for the benefit of others,” the Ute Business Committee said in an article for the Salt Lake Tribune Saturday.
Bishop and Chaffetz will present the bill to the House in few weeks, and if passed it would see 18 million acres of public lands in Eastern Utah downgraded from protected lands and turned into oil and gas drilling zones that are exempted from environmental protections, Think Progress reported earlier this year when the bill was unveiled.
“The actions of Bishop and Chaffetz would seek to divest the Ute Indian Tribe of their ancestral homelands,” the committee added while also bringing back “failed policies of tribal land dispossession that have had a devastating and lasting impact upon tribal nations for the past century.”
Read more: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Bill-Seeks-First-Native-American-Land-Grab-in-100-Years-20160919-0029.html
Monday, September 19, 2016
Kasich issues fuck you to GOP chair: Trump and Priebus responsible for ‘potential national wipeout’
By Sarah K. Burris
John Kasich and Reince Priebus (Photo: Screen capture)
Ohio governor and former presidential candidate John Kasich seems like he’s done with the Republican Party.
The ongoing battle with the party took off Sunday evening when top advisors trashed GOP party chair Reince Priebus and implied presidential candidate Donald Trump doesn’t have a shot to win.
According to Politico, Priebus alluded to the fact that the party might block all future aspirations for Kasich if he doesn’t play ball. Kasich’s campaign issued an official statement Sunday essentially telling Priebus, “Fuck you.”
“Thankfully, there are still leaders in this country who put principles before politics,” Kasich advisor John Weaver said in the statement. “The idea of a greater purpose beyond oneself may be alien to political party bosses like Reince Priebus, but it is at the center of everything Governor Kasich does.”
He then went on to call Priebus “a Kenosha political operative,” insulting Priebus’s home state of Wisconsin, and proclaiming that he should be thankful for Kasich for being a candidate with “an inclusive, conservative vision that can actually win a national election.”
Weaver continued, saying that Kasich is busy this week trying to save the GOP that has collapsed under Priebus’s leadership. “The Governor is traveling the nation supporting down ballot Republicans and preventing a potential national wipeout from occurring on Reince’s watch,” he said.
When asked how the Republican National Committee responds to the stunning smack down, a spokesman told Politico that the RNC is focused on winning the White House as well as other federal races, but didn’t comment on the feud.
An anonymous GOP strategist claims Kasich will anger the GOP for reneging on his promise to support the GOP nominee, regardless of who that happens to be.
“Politicians who sign their names on pledges and agreements then not honor them, are only doing harm to themselves, as they do nothing but illustrate to prospective voters their word means nothing,” the strategist said.
Kasich has refused to support Trump, going so far as to tell “Meet the Press” in a Sunday interview “it’s very, very likely I will not” vote for Trump.
Kasich also refused to support Trump during the party’s nominating convention that took place in his own state.
In a Sunday interview on “Face the Nation,” Priebus threatened Kasich while claiming it wasn’t a threat, saying, “Those people need to get on board. And if they’re thinking they’re going to run again someday, I think that we’re going to evaluate the process — of the nomination process and I don’t think it’s going to be that easy for them.”
“In order to be on the ballot in South Carolina, you actually have to pledge your support to the nominee, no matter who that person is. So what’s the penalty for that? It’s not a threat, but that’s just the question that we have a process in place,” Priebus continued.
Priebus then attempted to blame the lack of unity on Trump’s lackluster support among Republicans, before admitting, “We need to do a couple more percentage points better and we’re doing that as we move forward,” he said.
According to New York Times reporter Alex Burns, Trump escalated his attacks on Kasich by calling him a loser.
The ongoing battle with the party took off Sunday evening when top advisors trashed GOP party chair Reince Priebus and implied presidential candidate Donald Trump doesn’t have a shot to win.
According to Politico, Priebus alluded to the fact that the party might block all future aspirations for Kasich if he doesn’t play ball. Kasich’s campaign issued an official statement Sunday essentially telling Priebus, “Fuck you.”
“Thankfully, there are still leaders in this country who put principles before politics,” Kasich advisor John Weaver said in the statement. “The idea of a greater purpose beyond oneself may be alien to political party bosses like Reince Priebus, but it is at the center of everything Governor Kasich does.”
He then went on to call Priebus “a Kenosha political operative,” insulting Priebus’s home state of Wisconsin, and proclaiming that he should be thankful for Kasich for being a candidate with “an inclusive, conservative vision that can actually win a national election.”
Weaver continued, saying that Kasich is busy this week trying to save the GOP that has collapsed under Priebus’s leadership. “The Governor is traveling the nation supporting down ballot Republicans and preventing a potential national wipeout from occurring on Reince’s watch,” he said.
When asked how the Republican National Committee responds to the stunning smack down, a spokesman told Politico that the RNC is focused on winning the White House as well as other federal races, but didn’t comment on the feud.
An anonymous GOP strategist claims Kasich will anger the GOP for reneging on his promise to support the GOP nominee, regardless of who that happens to be.
“Politicians who sign their names on pledges and agreements then not honor them, are only doing harm to themselves, as they do nothing but illustrate to prospective voters their word means nothing,” the strategist said.
Kasich has refused to support Trump, going so far as to tell “Meet the Press” in a Sunday interview “it’s very, very likely I will not” vote for Trump.
Kasich also refused to support Trump during the party’s nominating convention that took place in his own state.
In a Sunday interview on “Face the Nation,” Priebus threatened Kasich while claiming it wasn’t a threat, saying, “Those people need to get on board. And if they’re thinking they’re going to run again someday, I think that we’re going to evaluate the process — of the nomination process and I don’t think it’s going to be that easy for them.”
“In order to be on the ballot in South Carolina, you actually have to pledge your support to the nominee, no matter who that person is. So what’s the penalty for that? It’s not a threat, but that’s just the question that we have a process in place,” Priebus continued.
Priebus then attempted to blame the lack of unity on Trump’s lackluster support among Republicans, before admitting, “We need to do a couple more percentage points better and we’re doing that as we move forward,” he said.
According to New York Times reporter Alex Burns, Trump escalated his attacks on Kasich by calling him a loser.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Here are 7 reasons the media shouldn’t let Trump move on from Birtherism
Seven Reasons The Media Shouldn't Let Trump Move On From Birtherism
Published with permission from Media Matters for America. The Trump campaign released a lie-filled statement that sought to put to rest criticism of Donald Trump for building his political image on racist, conspiratorial claims that President Obama was not born in the United States. The media has a responsibility to debunk Trump's lies and not let…
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