When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism.
Roger's breadth of experience, engaging style, and cultivation of loyal readership - over 92 million visitors - give him unique insight into the past, present, and future of the New Media and political rhetoric that exists in our society today.
What we are against:
Radical Right Wing Agendas
Incompetent Establishment
Donald J. Trump
Corporate Malfeasence
We are for:
Global and Econmoic Security
Social and Economic Justice
Media Accountability
THE RESISTANCE
New York requires a certification process before any charity can solicit $25,000 or more. Trump’s didn’t do this. Had the foundation registered, however, there likely would have been audits and investigations into the spending and some of the dealings that are now being revealed. They did manage to file the required IRS reports.
The New York Attorney General has opened an investigation into the foundation, but it is unclear if these new findings will be part of the investigation.
The foundation has received over $2.3 million from businesses owing Trump or his company money, however, they were instructed by Trump or his company to pay the foundation instead. The Trump Foundation also solicited small-dollar donations from supporters under the guise that the money would be donated to a veterans charity. The website advertised that the donations totaled $1.67 million.
On two different occasions, the foundation was used to settle legal disputes. In 2007, it dolled out $100,000 for a suit involving Mar-a-Lago Club. Just five years later it paid $158,000 to Martin Greenberg on the same day he settled a lawsuit against Trump’s golf courses. Most recently, Trump’s foundation made a donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s campaign just four days before her office decided not to participate in a lawsuit against Trump University.
The Trump Foundation has also purchased paintings of Trump, one of which is hanging in his hotel property. The campaign claimed that the resort is merely “storing” the painting. Trump also purchased a signed Tim Tebow helmet with the foundation’s money.
While Trump may have initially been the only donor in the 1990s, he began soliciting and scoring major donations in the early 2000s and never filed the appropriate paperwork. According to the law soliciting money means “to directly or indirectly make a request for a contribution, whether express or implied, through any medium.”
Trump admitted earlier this year that he doesn’t know whether or not his foundation has broken the law. When accusing Hillary Clinton and her family’s foundation of impropriety, Trump demanded a special prosecutor be appointed.
When pressed on the issue during an interview, son Eric (Uday) Trump shut it down.
A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.
Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval. But the company did not spend the money directly. Instead, with Trump’s knowledge, executives funneled the cash for the Cuba trip through an American consulting firm called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corporation. Once the business consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump’s company—then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts—how to make it appear legal by linking it after-the-fact to a charitable effort.
The payment by Trump Hotels came just before the New York business mogul launched his first bid for the White House, seeking the nomination of the Reform Party. On his first day of the campaign, he traveled to Miami where he spoke to a group of Cuban-Americans, a critical voting bloc in the swing state. Trump vowed to maintain the embargo and never spend his or his companies’ money in Cuba until Fidel Castro was removed from power.
He did not disclose that, seven months earlier, Trump Hotels already had reimbursed its consultants for the money they spent on their secret business trip to Havana.
At the time, Americans traveling to Cuba had to receive specific U.S. government permission, which was only granted for an extremely limited number of purposes, such as humanitarian efforts. Neither an American nor a company based in the United States could spend any cash in Cuba; instead a foreign charity or similar sponsoring entity needed to pay all expenses, including travel. Without obtaining a license from the federal Office of Foreign Asset Control before the consultants went to Cuba, the undertaking by Trump Hotels would have been in violation of federal law, trade experts say.
Officials with the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization did not respond to emails seeking comment on the Cuba trip, further documentation about the endeavor or an interview with Trump. Richard Fields, who was then the principal in charge of Seven Arrows, did not return calls seeking comment.
But a former Trump executive who spoke on condition of anonymity said the company did not obtain a government license prior to the trip. Internal documents show that executives involved in the Cuba project were still discussing the need for federal approval after the trip had taken place.
OFAC officials say there is no record that the agency granted any such license to the companies or individuals involved, although they cautioned that some documents from that time have been destroyed. Yet one OFAC official, who agreed to discuss approval procedures if granted anonymity, said the probability that the office would grant a license for work on behalf of an American casino was “essentially zero.”
‘He’s a Murderer’
Prior to the Cuban trip, several European companies reached out to Trump about potentially investing together on the island through Trump Hotels, according to the former Trump executive. At the time, a bipartisan group of senators, three former Secretaries of State and other former officials were urging then-President Bill Clinton to review America’s Cuba policy, in hopes of eventually ending the decades-long embargo.
The goal of the Cuba trip, the former Trump executive said, was to give Trump’s company a foothold should Washington loosen or lift the trade restrictions. While in Cuba, the Trump representatives met with government officials, bankers and other business leaders to explore possible opportunities for the casino company. The former executive said Trump had participated in discussions about the Cuba trip and knew it had taken place.
The fact that Seven Arrows spent the money and then received reimbursement from Trump Hotels does not mitigate any potential corporate liability for violating the Cuban embargo. “The money that the Trump company paid to the consultant is money that a Cuban national has an interest in and was spent on an understanding it would be reimbursed,’’ Richard Matheny, chair of Goodwin’s national security and foreign trade regulation group said, based on a description of the events by Newsweek. “That would be illegal. If OFAC discovered this and found there was evidence of willful misconduct, they could have made a referral to the Department of Justice.”
Shortly after Trump Hotels reimbursed Seven Arrows, the two companies parted ways. Within months, Trump formed a presidential exploratory committee. He soon decided to seek the nomination of the Reform Party, which was founded by billionaire Ross Perot after his unsuccessful 1992 bid for the White House.
Trump launched his presidential campaign in Miami in November 1999. There, at a luncheon hosted by the Cuban American National Foundation, an organization of Cuban exiles, he proclaimed he wanted to maintain the American embargo and would not spend any money in Cuba so long as Fidel Castro remained in power. At the time, disclosing that his company had just spent money on the Cuba trip, or even acknowledging an interest in loosening the embargo, would have ruined Trump’s chances in Florida, a critical electoral state where large numbers of Cuban-Americans remain virulently opposed to the regime.
“As you know—and the people in this room know better than anyone—putting money and investing money in Cuba right now doesn’t go to the people of Cuba,’’ Trump told the crowd. “It goes to Fidel Castro. He’s a murderer, he’s a killer, he’s a bad guy in every respect, and, frankly, the embargo must stand if for no other reason than, if it does stand, he will come down.”
‘Its Stock Price Had Collapsed’
By the time Trump gave that speech, 36 years had passed since the Treasury Department in the Kennedy administration imposed the embargo. The rules prohibited any American person or company—even those with operations in other foreign countries—from engaging in financial transactions with any person or entity in Cuba. The lone exceptions: humanitarian efforts and telecommunications exports.
The impact of the embargo intensified in 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union ended its oil subsidies to the island and triggered a broad economic collapse. By 1993, Cuba faced extreme shortages and Castro was forced to start printing money solely to cover government deficits. Three years later, the U.S. Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, which codified the embargo into law and worsened Cuba’s economic decline. With many financial options closed off, Cuba attempted to find overseas investment to modernize its tourism industry and other businesses.
The first signs that American policy might be shifting came in March 1998, when President Bill Clinton announced several major changes. Among them: resuming charter flights between the United States and Cuba for authorized Americans, streamlining procedures for exporting medical equipment and allowing Cubans in the U.S. to send small amounts of cash to their relatives on the island. However, Americans and American companies still could not legally spend their own money in Cuba.
That fall, as critics pressured Clinton to further loosen the embargo, Trump Hotels saw an opportunity. Like the communist regime, the company was struggling, having piled up losses for years. In 1998 alone, Trump Hotels lost $39.7 million, according to the company’s financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its stock price had collapsed, falling almost 80 percent from a high that year of $12 a share to a low of just $2.75. (After multiple bankruptcies, Trump severed his ties with the company; it is now called Trump Entertainment Resorts and is a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises, run by renowned financier Carl Icahn).
The company was desperate to find partners for new business which offered the chance to increase profits, according to another former Trump executive who spoke on condition of anonymity. The hotel and casino company assigned Seven Arrows, which had been working with Trump for several years, to develop such opportunities, including the one in Cuba.
On February 8, 1999, months after the consultants traveled to the island, Seven Arrows submitted a bill to Trump Hotels for the $68,551.88 it had “incurred prior to and including a trip to Cuba on behalf of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc.”
The 1999 document also makes clear that executives were still discussing the legal requirements for such a trip after the consultants had already returned from Cuba. The government does not provide after-the-fact licenses.
“Under current law trips of the sort Mr. Fields took to Cuba must be sanctioned not only by the White House but are technically on behalf of a charity,’’ the bill submitted to Trump Hotels says. “The one most commonly used is Carinas Cuba.”
The instructions contain two errors. First, while OFAC is part of the executive branch, the White House itself does not provide licenses for business dealings in Cuba. Second, the correct name of the charity is Caritas Cuba, a group formed in 1991 by the Catholic Church, which provides services for the elderly, children and other vulnerable populations in the Caribbean nation. Caritas Cuba did not respond to emails about contacts it may have had with Trump Hotels, Seven Arrows or any individuals associated with them.
The invoice from Seven Arrows was submitted to John Burke, who was then the corporate treasurer of Trump Hotels. In a lawsuit on a different legal issue, Burke testified that Trump Hotels paid the bill in full, although he denied recognizing the document.
‘Totally False’
The Cuba venture was one of two assignments given to Seven Arrows at that time, and the second has already emerged as an issue in the GOP nominee’s bid for the presidency. Trump Hotels also paid the consulting firm to help develop a deal with the Seminole tribe of Florida to partner in a casino there. Knowing that the Florida governor and legislature opposed casino gambling in the state, Trump authorized developing a strategy to win over politicians to get the laws changed in an effort named “Gambling Project.” The law firm of Greenberg Traurig was retained to assemble the strategy. A copy of the plan prepared by the lawyers showed the strategy involved hiring multiple consultants, lobbyists and media relations firms to persuade the governor and the legislature to allow casino gambling in the state. The key to possible success? Campaign contributions.
The plan states “the executive and legislative branches of Florida government are driven by many influences, the most meaningful of which lies in campaign giving.” For the legislature, it recommends giving to “leadership accounts” maintained by state political parties, rather than to individual lawmakers, because “this is where the big bucks go and the real influence is negotiated.” Records show that Seven Arrows also incurred $38,996.32 on its work on the Gaming Project, far less than it spent for the Cuba endeavor.
Aside from deceiving Cuban-Americans, records of the 1998 initiatives show that Trump lied to voters about his efforts in Florida during that period. At the second Republican presidential debate in September, one of Trump’s rivals, Jeb Bush, said the billionaire had tried to buy him off with favors and contributions when he was Florida’s governor in an effort to legalize casino gaming in the state. “Totally false,’’ Trump responded. “I would have gotten it.”
The documents obtained by Newsweek give no indication why the $39,000 spent on Seven Arrows’ primary assignment—arranging for a casino deal with the Seminole tribe—was so much less than the $68,000 expended on the Cuba effort. The former Trump executive could not offer any explanation for the disparity.
Though it has long been illegal for corporations to spend money in Cuba without proper authorization, there is no chance that Trump, the company or any of its executives will be prosecuted for wrongdoing. The statute of limitations ran out long ago, and legal analysts say OFAC’s enforcement division is understaffed, so the chances for an investigation were slim even at the time.
And perhaps that was the calculation behind the company’s decision to flout the law: the low risk of getting caught versus the high reward of lining up Cuban allies if the U.S. loosened or dropped the embargo. The only catch: What would happen if Trump's Cuban-American supporters ever found out?
Story in its entirety from Newsweek and Kurt Eichenwald
Orange Hitler mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany may have gone a bridge too far when she defended the presidential nominee from attacks from a former beauty queen he publicly fat-shamed as she equated her with a refugee who set off bombs in New York City.
Trump has been under fire since the Monday night debate, after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called him out for his treatment of women — in particular, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.
McEnany first defended Trump making Machado having to workout in a gym in front of reporters, saying “She didn’t have to do that,” only to be shouted down as it was explained to her that Machado was a Trump employee.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
She then attempted dismiss Machado’s claims over being called “Miss Piggy” and Miss Housekeeping” when she was employed by Trump after winning one of his beauty pageants.
McEnany cited a tabloid article claiming Machado once threatened the life of a judge in her native Venezuela, leading to some squabbling on the panel.
After it was pointed out that Machado just became a U.S. citizen and that she would never have passed a background check if such allegations were true, McEnany blurted, “It can’t be very tough because we just had two refugees, one setting off bombs in New York City, so it can’t be that big of a risk.”
During the first presidential debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Monday night, the tone shifted from serious to comical when the Democratic nominee joked about finger-pointing over the course of the evening.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
When asked by debate host Lester Holt to defend tax hikes for the wealthiest Americans, Clinton made an offhand remark that she’ll be held accountable for everything that transpires during the debate. “I have a feeling by the end of this evening I’m gonna be blamed for everything that’s ever happened,” she said.
Without missing a beat, Trump responded, “Why not?”
Clinton waved her hand and said sarcastically, “Why not? Yeah, why not. Just join the debate by saying more crazy things.”
Many things were observed during last night’s first presidential debate. The fact remains, that Cheeto Jesus is a human shit stain. From an apparent snotty nose, to not being ill prepared for the debate, the tangerine not only embarrassed himself and his family, but those who follow him.
With CNN’s poll showing 62 percent favoring Clinton and 27 percent favoring Cheeto Jesus after the debate– clearly we are seeing that this human excrement is not ready for anything, let alone the seat in the White House.
From taxes, to dick trickle down theories, to birtherism, Fuckface Von Clownstick just can’t seem to tell the truth.
Steve Schmidt of Sara Palin fame…in his own words after the debate. Nothing else needs to be said!
Returning after a one month hiatus, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver took a deep dive into the scandals – big and small – surrounding presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Needless to say, Trump came out “quantifiably worse” according to the HBO host.
However, Oliver explained, Clinton deserved equal scrutiny in the interest of fairness.
“I do know that even talking about her scandals will irritate some of you, given that her opponent is an unambiguously racist scarecrow stuffed with scrunched-up copies of Jugs magazine, and that’s fair,” Oliver stated. “But not being as bad as Donald Trump is a low bar to clear, and if you focus on nothing but him, you fail to vet a woman who might be president.”
“We’ve spent several frustrating weeks trolling through all the innuendo and exaggerations surrounding Hillary’s email and foundation scandals, and the worst thing we can say is that they both look bad. But the harder you look, the less you actually find,” he maintained. “There’s not nothing there, but what is there is irritating rather than grossly nefarious.”
VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO
With that, Oliver covered Trump’s use of his charity as a private piggy bank: paying his legal bills, making a political donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as her office investigated Trump’s “bullshit” university, and buying personal items like paintings and sports souvenirs.
According to Oliver, the biggest looming scandal is the one the voters know the least about: Trump’s finances.
“Bear in mind: we know nothing about Trump’s finances, and that is not good. He’s the first major party nominee since 1980 not to release his tax returns, and his justification is pathetic,” said Oliver, showing a clip of Trump saying he couldn’t release his returns because he’s being audited — which the IRS has disputed saying he’s free to release them at any time."
During HBO’s Real Time/Overtime section Friday Maher posed the question of how deeply was GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump damaging the Republican Party and what can they do to save themselves in case he wins.
Former Mitt Romney adviser Lanhee Chen admitted that the party is going through a “temporary correction.”
“After this election, the Republican Party does have some soul-searching to do,” he explained. “But to say that it is permanently changed, implies that I think this guy will have some permanent influence on how we think about the world, and I think, from the perspective of someone who hopes that isn’t true — I hope that isn’t true.”
VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO
Host Maher jumped in to ask, “Isn't their problem their voters?”
“I mean they didn't want Trump, a lot of them,” he continued. “And we see a lot of these Vichy Republicans who go along because they don’t want to upset the apple cart. They know better. They know where their bread is buttered, where their voters are. But you can get rid of the Trump, you can’t get rid of the voter. That’s who they want.”
The reality that it is, the hateful racist base that is Trumps followers - they are deplorable, and they thrive on knowing that.
Alisyn Camerota abruptly ended an interview with Cleveland Pastor James Davis, a supporter of GOP nominee Donald Trump, after he continually shouted over other another guest and refused to accept any facts showing that the black community was not in worse shape than any time in U.S. history.
On CNN’s New Day, Davis told Camerota that Trump was correct to assert that black people were worse off than “ever, ever, ever.”
“We see that poverty is at an all-time high underneath this administration,” he opined.
“The poverty rate has actually dropped,” Camerota pointed out.
Davis disagreed, arguing incorrectly that poverty had only decreased for whites under President Barack Obama.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed noted that the black unemployment rate had dropped from nearly 20 percent in 1985 to 8.1 percent in August of this year.
But Davis interrupted Reed and continued to do so throughout the remainder of the interview.
“That’s not true, that’s not true,” Davis said, talking over Reed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Reed shot back.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
Camerota tried to get the segment back on track by fact checking the black unemployment rate, but the response was a cacophony of disagreement.
“The pastor is doing what Donald Trump does: lies,” Reed insisted.
“That’s a euphemism!” Davis shouted back. “It’s the worst it’s been under this administration with these liberals in office! ‘Ever’ is a euphemism!”
As Reed rattled off statistics to prove that things were not worse for the black community than “ever, ever, ever,” Davis refused to let him be heard.
“That’s nonsense!” Davis exclaimed.
“Gentlemen, we can’t hear you!” Camerota pleaded before finally giving up. “Alright, guys, thank you for both of your perspectives. Thank you for the debate.”
Davis and Reed could be heard continuing to argue as CNN finally cut their audio feeds.
“Hopefully that’s not what we’re going to see four days from now when we have the first debate,” co-host Chris Cuomo quipped.
Jimmy Kimmel loves lying to people on the street about fake news and asking for their opinion on it. That’s exactly what he did with his “Man on the Street” interview Tuesday night.
Kimmel admitted he thinks that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump should release his tax returns like every other candidate before him. Trump claims that it doesn’t matter and people don’t care about it, but the polls aren’t in his favor. VIDEO COURTESY OF ABC
Trump supporters were told that Trump recently released his tax returns and did everything from writing off his marriages as “entertainment costs,” and listing his primary occupation on his taxes as “farmer,” as well as admitting his net worth is only $24,000 — not $10 billion.
Other “revelations” included donations to the dentist who killed Cecil the Lion and the legal defense fund of alleged child pornography connoisseur, Jared Fogle.
Samantha Bee last night jumped right on the recent New York City bombing, saying it’s going to take more than a dumpster bomb to scare New Yorkers who are still living through the dumpster fire that is the Donald Trump campaign.
“Do we need more proof that New Yorkers are the best?” she began. “The reason that they caught the bombing suspect is because a couple of New Yorkers saw his suitcase bomb on the sidewalk and thought, ‘Hey, free suitcase!’ threw the bomb away and made off with their new luggage!”
VIDEO COURTESY OF TBS
Turning to the mostly blase attitude of New Yorkers who seemed to take the explosion in stride, Bee went on to lecture terrorists that they are picking on the wrong city.
“Terrorists, when are you gonna learn that you can’t scare us, “she began as she showed a picture of a cockroach. “New Yorkers aren’t afraid of this and we’re not afraid of you.”
Showing a picture of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, she continued, “Only one thing scares us, the thought of people voting for a crazy person who exploits their fear of terrorism.”
Showing the exploded dumpster she added, “New Yorkers are used to this kind of dumpster fire, please don’t use it to elect this kind of dumpster fire,” while once again showing a picture of Trump
President Barack Obama blasted Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a Sunday fundraiser for Hillary Clinton.
Politico reporter Gabriel Debenedetti was at the New York City event where the president laid into former reality TV star trump as unqualified and not particularly interested in becoming qualified.
“This guy is not qualified to be the president,” Obama said. “And he shows no interest in even gaining the rudimentary knowledge required to make really hard decisions on a day-to-day basis. There’s no curiosity, there’s no desire to get up to speed. It’s an infomercial. It’s a reality show. And more disturbingly, it’s tapping into some of our worst impulses as a country — ones that divide us rather than bring us together; ones that seek to put down people who have been historically vulnerable as opposed to lifting them up.”
Obama also said that one of the reasons the U.S. hasn’t had a female president is because the national character is still coming to terms with its view of strong, independent women.
“We as a society still grapple with what it means to see powerful women,” the president said. “And it still trouble us in lots of ways, unfairly. And that expresses itself in all sorts of ways.”
Bill Maher was agog when he heard Kellyanne Conway’s reasoning on Friday for why she could never support Hillary Clinton.
Besides the fact that she is Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Conway said she “can’t support someone who lies for a living.”
“You just said you can’t support someone who ‘lies for a living,'” Maher replied. “When I read a list of provable lies.”
VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO
Earlier in the interview, Maher — drawing a line between “the scary and the false” in Trump’s campaign rhetoric — ran down some of Trump’s falsehoods.
“‘I don’t know anything about David Duke.’ Utter lie. ‘Vladimir Putin and I are best friends.’ He never met him,” said Maher. “He ‘got a letter from the NFL,’ which was proved never happened. He gave money to the veterans when he didn’t. ‘I was against the Iraq war,’ when it’s on tape that he was not.”
Bill Maher last night called this election a "referendum on decency" and argues for a return to the days when politicians could disagree respectfully - or at least without resorting to the name-calling and slurs that are slung around in today's climate
In Keith Olbermann’s Thursday edition, he names names when listing off all the ways that both Trump’s campaign and his official surrogates are truly deplorable.
Olbernamm lists off the fact that vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence can’t bring himself to describe David Duke as “deplorable”; new videos of Trump supporters punching protesters, including a 69-year-old woman who was on an oxygen tank; Trump surrogate Carl Paladino calling for the lynching of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and for smearing Khzir Khan as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood; and Trump himself making sexist remarks about Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina and Heidi Cruz. VIDEO COURTESY OF GQ
Olbermann pointed out that all of these deplorable statements must be aimed at drawing the support of people who are, in all likelihood, pretty deplorable.
“These are campaign leaders, surrogates, friends of Mr. Trump,” Olbermann pointed out. “If they’re not talking to a basket full of deplorables, who are they talking to? Why would you have them there? You stuff like that at work, you get fired.”
Discussion on CNN with regards to tightening polls yesterday quickly turned into laughter after Clownstick nutter Kayleigh McEnany got extremely carried away by suggesting Trump was headed for a landslide.
Addressing Clownstick’s day while Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is taking a few days off, McEnany lauded the GOP candidate for staying on message.
“He has stayed on message consistently,” she remarked. “That’s why he’s leading in Florida not only in one poll, two polls, but the three latest polls, all reputable polls. He’s leading in Ohio by two polls by four points. He’s within five points in Pennsylvania and Michigan.”
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
It was at this point when the Trump spokesperson went a bit too far.
“This is momentum that could develop into a landslide,” she insisted as one panel member could be heard laughing.
“He’s not just tightening the race, he’s opening up gaps now, ” she continued, before addressing former Bernie Sanders strategist Jonathan Tasini, “I know John thinks it’s anyone’s to dig in there–” as the rest of the panel could be heard joining the laughter.
Tasini was then seen shaking head saying, “Momentum into a landslide? I mean…” before dissolving into more laughter.
Whatever credibility McEnany may have had prior to coming on CNN - is truly ebbing away with each visit she makes. Can this woman possibly this stupid, or is it more reality TV, Clownstick style?
Keith Olbermann is back! In his first stint with GQ [the closer] - doing what he does best, [Slaying deplorable republicans] Olbermann recalled “the most outrageous of Donald Trump’s offenses in what is now his 15-month assault on American democracy.”
VIDEO COURTSEY OF GQ
After calling Trump a “demonic messiah in Oompa Loompa’s clothing,” Olbermann spends the next 15 minutes recounting what he claims are the 176 most egregious things Trumps had done since his campaign began last year.
Samantha Bee returned last night and, after joking announcing that Hillary Clinton had passed away (“She says she’s not dead, but as we know she is a liar“), she took her shots at the failings of presidential forum moderator Matt Lauer and the media in general.
Ridiculing the forum format that had a woefully unprepared Lauer asking the candidates questions while ex-military members were sidelined and given little time to query the candidates, singling out “draft dodging” Donald Trump.
“I bet the veterans have some things they’d like to ask a draft dodging, Gold Star family insulting, a war-crime advocating torture-phile whose worst Vietnam flashback involves scrambling for the last plane out of Gonorrhea,” she suggested.
While stating, “Why can’t the media just tell us what’s true and what’s bullshit?” she saved most of her ire for NBC’s Lauer.
After sharing clips of Lauer harping on Hillary’s emails, Bee unloaded on him.
“Oh, come on, Matt,” she ranted. “Do you really think there is an email smoking gun that the Inspector General, a House committee, the FBI and 18 months of nonstop news coverage couldn’t find, that will be magically uncovered by seven minutes of questions from a human Splenda whose crowning journalistic achievement is not knowing where the fuck he is?”
Bill Maher took a swipe at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday night at his show in Washington, DC.
During his set at DAR Constitution Hall, Politico reported, the Real Time host said, “I’m nervous. And I saw the headline today — race tightening. Trump ahead in Ohio and Florida. If this race is even the week before the election, somebody is going to have to go out there…”
John Hinckley, Jr. shot and wounded Pres. Ronald Regan in 1981. Last week, he was released from St. Elizabeth psychiatric hospital where he was sentenced after being found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Maher’s remarks will no doubt outrage Trump followers who are still resentful that the media seized upon the GOP candidate’s reference to “Second Amendment people”resolving the issue of a Pres. Hillary Clinton and her judicial nominees.
It should be noted, however, that Bill Maher isn’t running for president, whereas — in spite of how it may look sometimes — Donald Trump is.
Rachel Maddow quashed Cheeto Jesus’ idea that Russian President Vladimir Putin called him “brilliant.” And she was upset that she even had to.
“This is an election year where the Republican Party is running as their candidate for president a candidate who is so self-centered and narcissistic that a flippant — and apparently misquoted — compliment from another foreign leader was enough to put enough stars in his eyes that the Republican Party’s presidential nominee now really does say that he prefers the president of Russia to the president of the United States,” she fumed. “This is crazy. And it’s irrelevant. But this is the highest level of our politics right now.”
A night earlier, Maddow’s colleague Matt Lauer presented as fact that Putin called Trump “a brilliant leader” during their interview at the “Commander-in-Chief forum” aired on the network.
“Well, I think when he calls me brilliant, I’ll take the compliment, OK?” Trump responded.
But Maddow played footage of Putin himself correcting CNN’s Fareed Zakaria earlier this year regarding the matter, telling him, “I only said that he is a bright person. Isn’t he bright?”
VIDEO COURTESY OF MSNBC
However, even that description was lost in translation. Maddow explained that had Putin meant to call Trump “brilliant” because of his intellect, he would have used the word “blestiashchlii.” Instead, he used the adjective “yarkii,” which is closer to calling him brightly-colored or flamboyant.
“And you know what? It really shouldn’t matter,” she said. “On the one hand, who cares? On the other hand, we now have to. Because this is an election where the Republican presidential campaign at the number-one online ‘debunker’ of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing and the Challenger disaster, and the Aurora movie theater massacre, and the Sandy Hook shootings, and the Boston bombings because ‘all of those things didn’t really happen — they’re all government conspiracy theories.'”
Charles Blow on CNN yesterday to Cheeto Jesus surrogate Kayleigh McEnany that there was no contest between the candidates when it comes to honesty because, he argued, “Donald Trump is a pathological liar.”
CNN host Chris Cuomo introduced a segment about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s “controversies” by noting that the network had given equal time to Trump’s scandals.
McEnany pointed to Clinton’s “remarkable lack of transparency” as a reason that voters should choose Trump.
Blow shot back that Cheeto Jesus was a flawed advocate for transparency because he had refused to release his tax returns.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
“I don’t think that it holds water,” Blow insisted. “If she is, in fact, that criminal who has been investigated for 25 years, she’s the best criminal ever. Right? Because none of this sticks.”
“Trying to make these kind of equal issues that Donald Trump is a pathological liar,” he continued, noting that CNN recently aired documentaries about both candidates. “One, you see a public servant over a lifetime, which is what Hillary Clinton’s was. And with Donald Trump, you literally saw a pathological liar.”
“From the moment he started to run and was introduced to the public, every one of his business deals was shady. From the very beginning! And I sat there thinking to myself, this is a pathological liar.”
McEnany shifted the argument back the Clinton’s private email server.
“She said that she could not recall if she owned a flip phone,” McEnany charged. “I’m sure the American public can recall if they owned a flip phone over a period of eight years. These are remarkable statements of, I guess, incompetence or outright deceit.”
“I do see a pathological liar,” Blow shot back. “I genuinely believe that he is fundamentally and uniquely unqualified to be president, that there is something really wrong with the character of that man.”
The New York Times columnist asserted that the media had created a “false equivalency.”
“All politicians lie,” he observed. “His relationship to the truth is just a different level of lies.”
Clearly frustrated, McEnany pivoted to the terrorist attack in Benghazi.
“You have two Benghazi families coming out and they claim she told them it was about a video,” McEnany opined. “You’re going to ask me whose word I take? Someone who has been caught in a lie time and time again or two Benghazi families? I’m going to err with the Benghazi families.”
“That is part of what you do,” Blow replied. “Donald Trump should never be president of the United States. He’s a pathological liar. It’s just the truth. If you look at the fact checkers of all the things he’s said, the number of times they have caught him lying is off the charts.”
Cheeto Jesus mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany brought hysterical laughter to the entire CNN panel when she tried to defend accusations that the Cheeto Jesus bribed Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as a way that he is “exposing the system.”
On Erin Burnett’s OutFront, the discussion over Trump’s $25,000 contribution to Bondi’s campaign from the tax-exempt Donald J. Trump Foundation — only to have her refuse to follow up on fraud accusations — turns rancorous at times as accusations of bribery were tossed around.
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After a clip was shown of Trump admitting, “I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me,” and ““When I call, they kiss my ass,” McEnany attempted spin the questionable contribution in away that almost sounded like an admission of guilt.
“He’s exposing the system,”
McEnany blurted as the entire panel burst into laughter. “That’s the way Washington works. He’s exposing the system and he’s admitting what he does. This was not the case with Attorney General Bondi and it’s very important to point that out and here’s what Donald Trump does!”
Henry Rollins is worried about what will happen after November’s presidential election — no matter who wins.
The prolific punk rock legend, who hasn’t written a song in more than a decade but publishes books and newspaper columns and gives lengthy spoken-word performances, said his wealth insulates him from most of the consequences of a potential Donald Trump presidency, reported The Guardian.
“With my economic altitude, I don’t feel any of this,” Rollins said. “Donald Trump’s going to suck if you’re brown, black, lower middle-class or poor … I’m just going to enjoy the tax breaks that rich guys get from guys like him and keep on grooving.”
The former Black Flag singer said he’s concerned about how Trump supporters will react if the real estate developer and former reality TV star loses to Hillary Clinton.
“Trump fans are going to be very dangerous losers,” Rollins said. “And, if he wins, liberals will be very whiny and hilarious losers. There’ll be lines out of Starbucks, people wanting quadruple lattes; there’ll be more hand-wringing, more poetry – that’s a liberal on a bad day. The angry Tea Party person on a bad day, you lock and load, and go find a Muslim or brown-skinned person.”
But he’s confident the United States will survive, no matter what happens after the election.
“America gets what America deserves,” Rollins said. “America’s a tough place full of tough people, and I’m an example of a tough American. If you can’t take a punch in the teeth, you should move to Canada.”
Soledad O’Brien, a former CNN journalist blasted the cable news business yesterday over the weekend for profiting off the hate speech that has fueled Cheeto Jesus' political rise.
According to O’Brien, the media had gone through “contortions to make things seem equal all the time” when comparing Trump to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done — actually quite well — has normalized white supremacy,” O’Brien explained to CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday. “I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here is ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful.”
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“Ive seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,” she noted. “And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that.”
“And then Donald Trump will say, ‘Hillary Clinton, she’s a bigot.’ And it’s covered, the journalist part comes in, ‘They trade barbs. He said she’s a bigot and she points out that he might be appealing to racists.’ It only becomes ‘he said, she said.’ When in actuality, the fact that Donald Trump said she’s a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence, which if you looked at Hillary Clinton’s speech, she actually did have a lot of really good factual evidence that we would all agree that are things that have happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal.”
O’Brien insisted “that’s where journalists are failing: the contortions to try to make it seem fair.”
The former CNN host argued that the question that journalists should be asking is if Trump is:
“softening the ground for people — who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way — to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse to the point where they can do a five minute interview happily on national television?”
“And the answer is yes, clearly,” she said. “And there is lots of evidence of that.”
O’Brien observed that cable news outlets were effectively being rewarded for bad behavior.
“So hateful speech brings a really interested, angry audience,” she noted. “This is genius! We should do this more often. What shall we do when this election is over? We’re going to have to think about ways to really rile people up, make them angry and divide them.”
“Because that is something that cable news, frankly, and everybody can cover really well,” O’Brien lamented. “So, I find it very frustrating. I believe he was over-covered at the beginning.”
“Now, it is ‘he said, she said’ all the time. We have lost context. We actually don’t even cover the details of something. We just cover the back and forth of it. It’s funny to watch if it weren’t our own country and our own government actually operating.”
Scottie Nell Hughes, possibly the dumbest surrogate for Cheeto Jesus got fact-checked on the air on Saturday by anchor Poppy Harlow and activist Bakari Sellers.
Harlow pointed out that among nonwhite voters, Fuckface Von Clownstick is trailing even third party candidates in recent surveys, to which Hughes replied that the candidate has had rallies “all over the country” where the “doors are open” to everyone, regardless of race.
Sellers countered that Don the Con isn’t going to get a “participation trophy” just for showing up in one black neighborhood.
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“I know that many surrogates and many supporters of Donald Trump like to take the man away from his baggage,” Sellers said, “but you can not sit here and not remember that Donald Trump is the one who supported the ‘Birther’ movement — and just yesterday in Philadelphia he refused to even apologize for it.”
Sellers pointed to Trump’s refusal to rent to black tenants in New York City and the full-page ad the former reality TV star took out in the New York Times calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five.
He quoted the late author Maya Angelou, who said, “When someone shows you who they are, you need to believe it the first time.”
When it comes to the housing discrimination lawsuits, Hughes said, that was “probably 30, 35 years ago” and besides, “obviously Mr. Trump addressed it.”
“Unfortunately, as we have seen this campaign season, the press has tried to trap him in different aspects,” she said.
Klansman turned Louisiana politician David Duke’s endorsement of Trump, she went on, pales next to Clinton’s endorsement by the “California grand dragon KKK leader today, who is out there making promotional videos on his own accord but still putting out there. Hillary Clinton has yet to disavow him, so there’s ties on both sides.”
“Scottie, what are you saying there?” Harlow asked.
“I’m saying that Hillary Clinton has actually stronger ties, that has not disavowed a KKK endorsement,” Hughes said.
“Bakari?” asked Harlow. “Your response?”
“Scottie and any other surrogate and Donald Trump himself are going to have an extremely hard time with this argument,” said Sellers. “I think they’re actually going down the wrong path that somehow Hillary Clinton is the bigot in this situation, or has some racist past or racist history, because that’s simply not the case.”
Hughes made a hail-Mary pass, trying to pin the Birther movement on Hillary Clinton, saying it was a member of her staff who brought it up during the 2008 campaign.
“Scottie, that is not factual,” said Harlow. “That is not factually correct. Hillary Clinton never questioned the birthplace of Barack Obama when she was running against him.”
Much like his leader, Cheeto Jesus's most visible defender has admitted that he lied about his military experience and his college background after first stating that his church website had been hacked and someone else had posted the false information.
Pastor Mark Burns has been at the forefront of pushing the candidacy of Trump with black voters only, to create more controversy by first tweeting out a cartoon of Hillary Clinton in blackface before later lashing at cable TV host, asking about her “heritage”after she asked him on the cartoon.
Pressed by CNN host Victor Blackwell, Burns first admitted that he did not graduate from North Greenville University with a Bachelor of Science degree, before taking offense at the line of questioning and stating he thought the interview was for a profile and was off the record.
“I didn't agree to that,” Blackwell said before again pressing Burns on his bio.
“This is not fair at all,” Burns replied. “I thought we were doing a profile and all of a sudden you’re here to try to destroy my character.”
“I’m not here to destroy your character,” Blackwell replied.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
As part of their investigation, CNN stated that Burns only attended the university for one semester and that his claim that he served in six years in the Army Reserve was also false, with the pastor only serving a short stint in the National Guard.
Burns later released a statement on saying he had “overstated some details” in his biography because, as a young man, he wanted to be taken seriously as a pastor starting up his new church in Greenville, South Carolina.
In his statement, Burns also said he was under attack because “I am a black man supporting Donald Trump for president.”
Burns, just one of many whom follow this asshat - who seem to suffer from pathological liar syndrome.
Conway made the cable TV news rounds in 2012 defending a client, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, after the former Republican congressman claimed that women’s bodies could somehow naturally prevent pregnancies from occurring in cases of “legitimate rape.”
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
The GOP pollster tried to change the subject during an Aug. 21, 2012, appearance on CNN by falsely claiming there’d been a rise in the number of sex-selection abortions in the United States — and that Democrats promoted the practice.
“The Washington Post reported on Aug. 10 that there are Democrats who are going to the convention in Charlotte who want their plank expanded,” Conway said. “They feel that it’s too draconian. It doesn’t allow for partial birth abortion bans. It doesn’t ban sex selection. You’ve got all these little baby girls being killed just because they’re girls in this country.”
Host Anderson Cooper interrupted incredulously: “Wait, what? Excuse me, where is that happening?”
Conway said Planned Parenthood data, which she said had been collected in a Guttmacher Institute report, showed that sex-selection abortions were not uncommon — and she urged the U.S. Congress to pass the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.
“The House just passed a bill to ban that,” Conway said. “I’m not sure it ever went to the Senate, and I’m sure President Obama would veto it if it was put on his desk.”
Critics say that bill, which lawmakers considered earlier this year, was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” that twists feminism and uses racial stereotypes about Asian immigrants to restrict abortion rights.
“But statistically, there’s not really much evidence that that is actually occurring in the United States,” Cooper said. “Amongst some immigrant groups in small numbers it may be occurring but in no statistical measure is it significant.”
Conway urged Cooper to look at Guttmacher Institute’s statistics, so during a commercial break, he did.
“Before the break, Kellyanne, you mentioned the Guttmacher Institute information on sex-selective abortion in the United States,” Cooper said. “Here’s what they actually say in a May 30 press release titled ‘Sex Selective Abortion Bans: A Disingenuous New Strategy to Limit Women’s Access to Abortion.'”
“The study acknowledges the practice does go on overseas, as we mentioned, and perhaps in certain Asian-American communities in the United States in small numbers,” Cooper continued. “But, quote, ‘In the United States, meanwhile, there is limited data indicating that sex-selective abortion may be occurring in some Asian communities. Although the U.S. sex ratio at 1.05 males for every female is squarely within biologically normal parameters.’ So I just wanted to put that out there.”
Dan Rather took to Facebook on Wednesday night to blast Donald Trump’s long-anticipated speech that promised to outline specifics of his proposed immigration policy.
“He claimed it would be a detailed policy address, and yet from the start his tone was a seething, angry attack on what he described as a world of dangerous murderers and rapists who seem to be roaming ‘sanctuary cities.’ Focusing on a few isolated and already well-documented tragedies, he painted the entire undocumented world with the casual brush of violence,” Rather wrote.
“…He would say “and 3”, “and 4” as if it were a detailed list of proposal, but any sense of order was swamped by a tsunami of rhetoric and tone.”
“But any details are beside the point. With a raspy roar, leaning over the podium, Trump delivered his message with glee – This is our country and we are being overwhelmed by hordes not fit to be in our country. He suggested that “These People” are well known to law enforcement and could be rounded up with ease. It was a line that seemed more in keeping with the culture of the old East Germany than the United States. ‘We have got to have a county folks’ he summed it up. ‘Under a Trump Administration it’s called America first.'”
Rather also commented on the speech’s intended audience. “The crowd – nearly all white from the looks of the cutaway shots – ate it up with a hostility that seems in keeping with those who have flocked to Trump’s angry march through this campaign season,” Rather continued.
