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Re: US Politics Thread
Prior to the town hall debate Sunday night, Donald Trump held a press conference featuring three women who have accused President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, assault and other sexual improprieties.
It was a bizarre scene considering Trump himself confessed to being a harasser of women in a leaked video from 2005. The press conference became especially absurd when news outlets began relaying all of the horrible things Trump has said about these women in years past.
In a 1998 interview with Chris Matthews, for example, Trump called Paula Jones “a loser.”
Jones, who settled a sexual harassment suit against Bill Clinton, was invited by the Trump campaign to sit in the family’s box during the debate.
Throughout the 1990s, Trump consistently expressed a general disdain for Jones, and Clinton’s other alleged victims, saying in an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that Bill Clinton was the real victim in these instances.
“His victims are terrible. He is, he is really a victim himself,” Trump said. “The whole group, Paula Jones, Lewinsky, it’s just a really unattractive group. I’m not just talking about physical.”
Trump went as far as to blame Jones for potentially ruining Clinton’s presidency. “The fact is that she may be responsible for bringing down a president indirectly,” he said.
In the jaw dropping press conference Sunday night, Trump seemed to be exploiting these women at Hillary Clinton’s expense, trying to embarrass her before the high-stakes debate.
However, in the ’90s, Trump touted a different tune, saying he was impressed with the way the first lady handled these scandals.
“I think she’s gone through terrible times,” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview. “I think she’s been through more than any woman should have to bear.”
Trump, now buried in his own sexual assault scandals, apparently believes Hillary can carry some more contempt and ridicule.
Jesus. This whole election is a sham.
This will be Trump and the Clintons the day after the election....
The country has been punk'd.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: US Politics Thread
This is the interview I discussed earlier.
Pence was a solid choice for Donald
Re: US Politics Thread
How long until the next Trump tape drops?
If a video of him saying all this came out, I still bet there's people that'd be defending him.
Giuliani would say; "He's just talking like normal people". "People don't want a composed politician."
Re: US Politics Thread
You know it. ^^^
The problem Trump has now is that he's just doubling down (tripling down) on his hardcore base. He's trimming away everybody else, but making the Brietbart types thrilled with his talk of jailing Hillary, 90's sex stuff etc etc. The hardcore right base isn't going to get him elected.
Glenn Beck....GLENN BECK just came out today in favor of Hillary. Not necessarily a ringing endorsement, but in favor of Hillary Clinton. Between him and Flagg....I just don't understand anything anymore.
Re: US Politics Thread
I'm sure this will just be scoffed at and explained away, but this story about Trump-WikiLeaks-Russia connections is troubling on many levels but also exposes WikiLeaks as untrustworthy, Russia as the hackers and Trump as a gullible mouthpiece for whatever source will say something about about Clinton.
(Don't comment if you're not going to read story)
Dear Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal
I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin—and, somehow, Donald Trump—seem to believe. And that should raise concerns not only about Moscow’s attempts to manipulate this election, but also how Trump came to push Russian disinformation to American voters.
An email from Blumenthal—a confidant of Hillary Clinton and a man, second only to George Soros at the center of conservative conspiracy theories—turned up in the recent document dump by Wikileaks. At a time when American intelligence believes Russian hackers are trying to interfere with the presidential election, records have been fed recently to Wikileaks out of multiple organizations of the Democratic Party, raising concerns that the self-proclaimed whistleblowers group has become a tool of Putin’s government. But now that I have been brought into the whole mess—and transformed into Blumenthal—there is even more proof that this act of cyberwar is not only being orchestrated by the Russians, but that they are really, really dumb.
The evidence emerged thanks to the incompetence of Sputnik, the Russian online news and radio service established by the government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya.
The documents that Wikileaks unloaded recently have been emails out of the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s election campaign. Almost as soon as the pilfered documents emerged, Sputnik was all over them and rapidly found (or probably already knew about before the Wikileaks dump) a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal.
The email was amazing—it linked Boogie Man Blumenthal, Podesta and the topic of conservative political fevered dreams, Benghazi. This, it seemed, was the smoking gun finally proving Clinton bore total responsibility for the terrorist attack on the American outpost in Libya in 2012. Sputnik even declared that the email might be the “October surprise” that could undermine Clinton’s campaign.
To understand the full importance of the story—and how much Putin and his Kremlin cronies must have been dancing with delight—I have to quote the top few paragraphs:
" In a major revelation from the second batch of WikiLeaks emails from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta it was learned that Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal believed that the investigation into Benghazi was legitimate because it was "preventable" and the result of State Department negligence.
In an email titled "The Truth" from Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the adviser writing to undisclosed recipients said that "one important point that has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable" in what may turn out to be the big October surprise from the WikiLeaks released of emails hacked from the account of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta.
Then came the money quote: "Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate," said Blumenthal, putting to rest the Democratic Party talking point that the investigation into Clinton's management of the State Department at the time of the attack was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt."
Those words sounded really, really familiar. Really familiar. Like, so familiar they struck me as something I wrote. Because they were something I wrote.
The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000 word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. There was no mistaking that Blumenthal was citing Newsweek—the magazine’s name and citations for photographs appeared throughout the attached article. The Russians had carefully selected the “of course” paragraph, which mentions there were legitimate points of criticism regarding Clinton and Benghazi, all of which had been acknowledged in nine reports about the terror attack and by the former Secretary of State herself. But that was hardly the point of the story, “Benghazi Biopsy: A Comprehensive Guide to One of America’s Worst Political Outrages.” The piece is about the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans, and the article slammed the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation—the tenth inquiry into the tragedy.
Here is the real summation of my article, which the Russians failed to quote:
" The historical significance of this moment can hardly be overstated, and it seems many Republicans, Democrats and members of the media don’t fully understand the magnitude of what is taking place. The awesome power of government—one that allows officials to pore through almost anything they demand and compel anyone to talk or suffer the shame of taking the Fifth Amendment—has been unleashed for purely political purposes. It is impossible to review what the Benghazi committee has done as anything other than taxpayer-funded political research of the opposing party’s leading candidate for president. Comparisons from America’s past are rare. Richard Nixon’s attempts to use the IRS to investigate his perceived enemies come to mind. So does Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting during the 1950s, with reckless accusations of treason leveled at members of the State Department, military generals and even the secretary of the Army…The consequences, however, are worse than the manipulation of the electoral process. By using Benghazi for political advantage, the Republicans have communicated to global militants that, through even limited attacks involving relatively few casualties, they can potentially influence the direction of American elections."
Of course, this might be seen as just an opportunity to laugh at the incompetence of the Russian hackers and government press—once they realized their error, Sputnik took the article down. But then things got even more bizarre.
This false story was only reported by the Russian controlled agency (a reference appeared in a Turkish publication, but it was nothing but a link to the Sputnik article). So how did Donald Trump end up advancing the same falsehood put out by Putin’s mouthpiece?
At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”
“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.
“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.”
The crowd booed and chanted, “Lock her up!”
This is not funny. It is terrifying. The Russians engage in a sloppy disinformation effort and, before the day is out, the Republican nominee for president is standing on a stage reciting the manufactured story as truth. How did this happen? Who in the Trump campaign was feeding him falsehoods straight from the Kremlin? (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment).
The Russians have been obtaining American emails and now are presenting complete misrepresentations of them—falsifying them—in hopes of setting off a cascade of events that might change the outcome of the presidential election. The big question, of course, is why are the Russians working so hard to damage Clinton and, in the process, aid Donald Trump? That is a topic for another time.
For now, though, Americans should be outraged. This totalitarian regime, engaged in what are arguably war crimes in Syria to protect their government puppet, is working to upend a democracy to the benefit of an American candidate who uttered positive comments just Sunday about the Kremlin's campaign on behalf of Bashar al-Assad. Trump’s arguments were an incomprehensible explication of the complex Syrian situation, which put him right on the side of the Iranians and Syrian,s who are fighting to preserve the government that is the primary conduit of weapons used against Israel.
So no, Mr. Putin, I’m not Sidney Blumenthal. And now that you have been exposed once again, get the hell out of our election. And Mr. Trump—you have some explaining to do.
Re: US Politics Thread
I really wanna know what Polluxlm has to say about Russia's involvement in Trumps candidacy..
Unfortunately his mind has just been blown so we'll never know..
Re: US Politics Thread
I too have been very troubled with the hacking, Wikileaks and Trump's connections to Russia. It's much more disturbing to me then him being a sexist douchebag, that's for sure.
This is also where our tabloid 24/7 "news" media and our uneducated populace fails. In an educated society with legitimate news, this would be one of the top stories. Instead we'll get a couple dozen articles written, that will simply be swallowed up by all the other noise.
Re: US Politics Thread
Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
Disloyal R's are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win - I will teach them!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
He's going for it, he's getting more unhinged. That said, I do get a kick out of this back firing on sleazy republicans that encouraged him.